Writer: Timberlake Wertenbaker
Director: Stella Powell-Jones
Jules et Jim remains one of the best French films of all time. It tells the story of two friends and their passion for Catherine who’s a free spirit when it comes to love. François Truffaut’s New Wave vibe ensures that the tale is edgy, strange and full of energy, qualities that this new stage adaptation lacks.
Rather than following the narrative of the 1962 film, playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker has gone back to the source material, Henri-Pierre Roché’s novel of 1953. Writing for just a cast of three, Wertenbaker omits some of the minor characters seen at the start of the film but instead adds more details about Catherine’s life and career missing from the movie.
However, the opening moments are similar as we see Jim and Jules meet each other in early 20th-century Paris. Despite their different nationalities – Jules is German while Jim, despite his English-sounding name, is French – the two men are soulmates who fully enjoy each other’s company, without ever arguing. But their friendship is compromised when Kath, as she is now called, appears on the scene. Jules immediately falls in love with her, telling Jim that he should steer clear of her. Jules tells Jim that Kath is one interest that they will not share.
But after World War One, when, of course, the two men fought on different sides, Jules changes his mind and encourages Jim to take up with Kath after all. Perhaps they could work out some kind of ménage à trois where all three parties would be satisfied. What follows in Wertenbaker’s version of events is quite repetitive as the two men sometimes together, and sometimes separately, try to hold on to the mercurial Kath.
In the film, Catherine, as played by Jeanne Moreau, was an unreadable cypher who believed in absolute love. Here Wertenbaker attempts to offer reasons for Kath’s illogical and contradictory behaviour where she will sleep with other men in order to punish Jules and Jim who, she believes, are too stupid to understand her actions. While it’s enlightening to see Kath as a more rounded character, it’s still difficult to sympathise with her choices.
Patricia Allison definitely gives Kath substance, but often Kath comes across as a petulant and privileged child as she is impulsive and inconsistent. Because the men can never entirely know her, neither can they possess her. They love her because she is always out of reach. But it’s difficult to see what Kath sees in her two lovers. Samuel Collings’ Jules is too good; his saintliness needs a streak of cruelty for his character to really come alive. And Alex Mugnaioni’s Jim seems just too desperate to really attract such an idealist as Kath.
The play covers a period of 30 years, but there is no sense of speed from director Stella Powell-Jones, unlike her very lively and fluid Orlando at the Jermyn Street Theatre last year. With no sense of purpose, the action verges on boring in places and it’s a long 90 minutes. Isabella Van Braeckel’s set, inspired by artist Yves Klein, holds one surprise, but perhaps it’s revealed too early and could be saved for later.
In Jules and Jim, the characters believe that they are ‘pioneers of feeling’ experimenting with new ways of living, new ways of loving, but that sense of innovation is not mirrored in this staid production.
Runs until 27 May 2023
