In a couple, someone always suffers, while the other is bored. Throughout the history of cinema, many films have been made on the theme of the crisis of marital relations, and most of them are quickly erased from memory. I drew attention to the “Rupture” because of the presence of Isabelle Huppert and Daniel Otoi in it.
Pierre and Anna, like many other couples, live a normal life. They are raising a fifteen-month-old son Lulu and, at first glance, they have no special problems. But, one day, during a movie, Anna does not let Pierre take her hand, and a few days later she stuns her husband with the news that she fell in love with another person. Pierre is stunned, he does not know what to do in this situation: try to save the marriage for the sake of the child or break up with Anna.
Christian Vincent shoots the story of the gradual disintegration of relations between Pierre and Anna, emphasizing the influence on small nuances – the scene of the movie, mentioned above, the dialogues of the characters, who increasingly do not hear and do not understand each other, the everyday routine that becomes a reason for quarrels, the attempts of the heroes to morally hit each other on “pain points”.
The director clearly followed the cinematic techniques laid down by Robert Bresson and whose adept was Michael Haneke, whose last film from the "freezing trilogy" came out three years before the premiere of "The Break." Like Haneke in the freeze trilogy, Vincent broke the film into separate snippets separated by a black screen. The author specifically gave the characters standard names - Pierre and Anna - so that the viewer could associate them with themselves.
The author impartially observes the characters, without trying to cause sympathy for any of the characters. Pierre and Anna are depicted as ordinary people, with a standard set of advantages and disadvantages. There is no excessive dramatization of scenes, moreover, a lot remains “behind the scenes” so that the viewer can make independent conclusions about the future of this pair.
Isabelle Huppert and Daniel Otoi did a great job in their roles. Daniel Otoi, who shined in the same year as Henry of Navarre in Queen Margot, portrayed an ordinary man well, with a standard set of “tricks” making Pierre even closer to the viewer. Isabelle Huppert, in turn, showed an ordinary woman, stuck in a standard situation of “marriage without love”.
To summarize, I want to say that it turned out to be a good film. If you are fans of Isabelle Huppert, Daniel Otoi or European cinema in general, then be sure to watch it.
7 out of 10