Andrzej Zulawski’s L’important C’est D’aimer is a film of dishevelled lyricism, bursting with noise and anger; an insane storm-tainted flamboyant opera; a visual symphony with apocalyptic emphasis featuring sleaze-bags, clowns, drop-outs, wimps, bastards, and “puppet shows depicting lives of complete scoundrels” and “ruined careers.” Where some people will see nothing but a graphic canvas of pain, horror and a bloody parade of violence, others who analyze the darkness will see a call for compassion. This is the story of a fragile woman, Nadine Chevalier, who supports her failure-obsessed companion to the bitter end, and who meets a photographer weighed down by remorse. This vibrant and captivating cinema of art, music and sound is down to the genius of Zulawski, and his sensual and sentimental power of evocation, which together create something which reflects the deep and perhaps unconfessed anxiety inside every one of us. It is, as Dostoyevsky said at the end of ‘Crime and Punishment,’ “the story of a generation.”
