Cinema Travelogue

Diary of a Fleeting Affair features a pair of lovers that commits to a non-commitment relationship. This ostensible paradox is the key to the film’s playful and human nature. The first scene of the film is a second encounter between the more timid and submissive Simon, who is married with kids, and a more open-minded and frank Charlotte, who is divorced with a teenage son. They both agree to a relationship solely based around sex, but the secret tension percolating beneath their casual conversation question whether such ideal even exist. Mouret keeps everything incredibly fluid, humorous, and easy-going without forgetting the essential emotional weight that makes the episodic narrative structure cohesive as a whole. Every time camera is directly facing Charlotte or Simon, or surprisingly zooming in on them, the connections between the two become very deliberate despite their verbal denial; no matter how carefree the two intends the relationship to be, passion arises on the basis of their intimacies – it’s nature like everything else. There are scenes where a new party is introduced into the relationship and the subtle gestures from the two leads grant the film with so much life; every human moment is finely moderated. The fake ending montage only works because the tremendous location work Mouret maintains throughout a film that’s heavily reliant on dialogues and the charms of its central couple. The mise-en-scène swiftly navigates through the confines of apartments, museums, and outdoor trails, always finding the two at balance with their beautiful surroundings. Overall, it’s a neat project that is surprisingly un-messy despite fornication and cheating being the central subject; very different from the Bergman film the two watch at the cinema. The final monologue from Simon is a very moving capsule of this project as a whole, of admitting there are things that get away no matter how much we may not want them to; to confront and accept passion and its loss in the face is to embrace the continuum of time that will heal all like nature itself. The final shot accompanied by the violin is an emblem of celebrating the journey even it will end in departure, like life itself.