Jules & Jim

Each member of the threesome is a little bit me. Catherine, the impulsive, selfish free-spirit, who acts to gain knowledge and believes she cannot hurt anyone else. She demands adoration, but cannot truly love. She could never be faithful because she must be free. Everything destructive in me is Catherine, but everything really alive is, as well.

And Jules, who is certainly asexual, content to simply be with that which he loves, on its terms. Yes, I have a streak of martyrdom in me. I am so completely dispassionate. Couldn’t part of me be content alone in the woods with my books and meaningless security?

And Jim, perhaps most human and conventional of them all, with his patience and anger and actual concern for human suffering — his ability to actually feel it, too. Fickle yet devoted; able to turn off his feelings like a light switch, but always looking for a reason to commit.

It’s a terribly sad story of the risks and wisdom of youth, and how that stays with you even as life demands more of you, even as you run from it. And of the various and relative nature of love — how many ways can you love another person? It all defies words and convention. This is what has become so clear to me in the last year or so. And this film embodies all that. Jules et Jim is for me the rare film I not only love completely but live completely, and it will stay with me.