In 1984, tender passions (directed in 1983) won five Oscars at the ceremony of the same name. Big difference with France, where the film is badly seen by critics and goes relatively unnoticed. James L. Brooks, for whom this is his first feature film, has since been passionately rehabilitated by some film fans, at the risk, no doubt, of going into the opposite excess. Atypical and endearing Hollywood personality, coming from television where he will never have ceased to officiate (in particular as producer of simpsons), Brooks is a man of few films, six in total between 1983 and 2010, a craftsman attached to the production of his works and concerned about respecting the intelligence of his spectators, in other words something that has almost completely disappeared from the surface of the empire.
Adapted from a novel by Larry McMurtry (1936-2021), tender passions mainly depicts the relationships, toxic and tender at the same time, of a mother (Shirley MacLaine) and her daughter (Debra Winger). The first, Aurora, is a widow who has devoted herself to her daughter rather than rebuilding her life, combining a tight-lipped temperament with a kind of mad love for her offspring which she conceals under feigned indifference. Collared for fear of showing herself for what she is, cowardly on all occasions, courted by two pale suitors who compete in abasement, she will not be able, however, once her daughter is married and has left to live in another state, to defend himself from a deaf attraction for his neighbor Garrett (Jack Nicholson). This one, who has the merit of calling a spade a spade, is a somewhat scruffy former astronaut, severely focused on bottles, young girls and sports cars.
tragic twist
Emma, for her part, had no other urgency than to take flight to escape the maternal influence. She finds the opportunity in Flap (Jeff Daniels), a young blond man without particular quality, but who marries her and has children with her. Soon leaving Houston, the family settles in Iowa, where Emma realizes that Flap is cheating on her, in addition to struggling to provide the family with a decent life. Which authorizes him, no doubt, to fall in love on the shelves of a supermarket with their bank adviser. But Flap is appointed to Nebraska, Emma forgives and follows him.
At this turning point, the film, which modeled its story, by dint of ellipses and lightness, on the rising grace of champagne bubbles, takes a tragic and overwhelming turn in a frontality devoid of complacency. We will say no more, except to point out that the philosophy of James L. Brooks is already entirely in this first feature film, namely that in the “painful” precariousness of the march of the world, which makes everything pass from life to death without warning, cinema must oppose its own belief in a life that continues.
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