“Tell her that I love her.” Miller’s second picture is strikingly different from his unintelligible, unprofessional debut with a surprisingly delicate intonation, attention to the experiences of the characters, convincing but not excessive use of close-ups, which looks like a stark contrast to the vulgar cynicism of “Best Way of Marching”.
First of all, artistically risky, but at the same time, as the narrative shows, conceptually justified, was the choice to play the role of the unsociable intellectual J. Depardieu, whose presence in the frame in glasses at first causes an aesthetic shock to the viewer. But as the plot progresses, we see how organic this actor is in the role of an emotionally sensitive person trying to hide a strong feeling under the mask of equanimity.
Accustomed to perceive Depardieu in the image of a sexually liberated simpleton, the viewer willy-nilly tends to narrow the range of professional opportunities of this performer, but Miller’s film shows how restrained, modest, shy, if the role requires it. No less touching in its almost Turgenev enlightenment looks and Miu-Miu, also beyond her characteristic role of a broken girl.
Screening the novel by P. Highsmith, the director removes the superfluous suspense from it, turning into an elegant choreography of looks, gestures and phrases a quite action-packed narrative. Already the first fifteen minutes of the film demonstrate his amazing artistic maturity, the director’s firmness in following the chosen intonation, the structural integrity noticeable in each scene, whose duration is calculated to a second, which makes the episodes rich but concise.
The music of Mozart and Schubert, which could sound too dramatic in a different context, in Miller’s film serves as not a commentary on the video series, but a full-fledged participant in the narrative. The story of the love polygon happily avoids boulevard, turning into a multi-figure fresco about the suffering of modern martyrs of love. The genuine, unsimulated tragedy of Miller’s film can be compared only with the paintings of I. Averbach “Explanation in Love” and “Faryatyev’s Fantasia”: a chain of unrequited love, as if the consistent mockery of fate over all lovers of the world, becomes truly endless, involving more and more human lives.
The obsession of the hero Depardieu, hidden by the restrained behavior of an unsociable person, breaks through in spontaneous outbursts of rage and violence: the violent temperament that has become a hallmark of most of his characters, in this picture is combined with some ineffable and even more touching the viewer fragility, defenselessness before the overwhelming feeling. This love knows no prohibitions, laws and decencies, it does not put the desires of others into anything, completely focusing only on itself.
Unlike the sweet but weak Faryatev, the character of Miller is able to charm with his irrepressible, borderless energy, but even Juliette, in love with him, in many ways similar to love, obsessed with him, before shy, but soon more and more intrusive, begins to despise him for the undivided selfishness of feeling.
For an hour and a half, the viewer never ceases to be amazed by the director’s ability to unfold before us the detailed symptoms of a love illness in all its ruthlessness to a person. Editing could be recognized as a workshop, if not for the presence of optional scenes (with the participation of Clavier, for example), without which the narrative would acquire even greater dynamism. Once again admires the harmonious combination of psychological depth and action, characteristic of Highsmith’s novels, which are truly difficult to spoil when filming.
There is not a shadow of the directorial mistakes Miller made in the debut, but the main advantage of Tell Her I Love Her is the extremely appropriate use of close-ups, sometimes very short (sometimes showing only the movement of Depardieu’s eyelashes), but skillfully focusing on the experiences of the characters. It is these hidden, as if icebergs, emotions that are the source of the magnetism of the video sequence, in terms of the strength of the suggestive effect much superior to the scenes of expressive explosions, obvious in the way of their influence on the viewer.
The subtle visualization of the subtext, which is spoken about indirectly, imperceptibly, brings Miller’s film together with the best examples of this type of cinema, primarily Stelling’s “Rifleman” and Antonioni’s “Eclipse”. "Tell her I love her" shows that silence is sometimes more expressive than what is said and obvious. The final interchangeability of the imaginary and the real seems to be the only possible conclusion of events, giving history an ancient tragedy.
This ability of the director by means of cinema to turn albeit a high-quality, psychologically detailed, but still a detective novel into a high tragedy, to avoid vulgar melodramatism, numerous clichés of love stories, to combine modern realities and attributes of classical art, gives “Tell her that I love her” that incredible ingenuity balance of form and content, the integrity that is peculiar only to cut diamonds.