Love Songs

This is from the film Les chansons d'amour (Love Songs). Ismaël, the one with the dark hair, is a young widow. He fully expected to live the rest of his life with his wife, but one night when they were out on the town, she unexpectedly dropped dead from an undiagnosed heart condition. Ismaël is not only heartbroken but profoundly depressed because life no longer makes any sense, and he doesn’t know how to continue. He doesn’t know how to stop needing this young woman he expected to be by his side for decades to come. When he meets Erwann, a university student, he thinks he’s just a young, silly flirt who wants to play. Ismaël doesn’t take him seriously, and besides, he never considered having a relationship with a man before. But Erwann is persistent, and eventually Ismaël realizes that he might be interested after all. Ismaël gives in to Erwann, but he makes it clear that his grief has gutted him, and in this song, he is imploring the boy to make love to him in such a way that it rekindles his passion and desire for life. He demands that Erwann burn when he sinks into his bed of ice.

Desire for a man is what brings Ismaël back from the brink of oblivion. This is fiction, of course, but I think it reflects life. It’s beautiful and real. And it’s important. I think if we ignore these needs, if we attempt to deny them and to smother them we run the risk of destroying ourselves. And I strongly suspect that if there is any kind of spiritual dimension to life it is intertwined and closely connected to passion.