Cinema: Heart Failure

TO DIE OF LOVE

Directed by ANDRE CAYATTE Screenplay by ANDRE CAYATTE and ALBERT NAUD

In France in 1968, a high school teacher named Gabrielle Russier fell in love with one of her students. He was 17 and thus legally a minor. His parents invoked the law to thwart the affair, at one point having Miss Russier arrested and even sending the boy to a sanitarium. After several months, Miss Russier took her own life in desperation. The episode became a cause celebre in France and the subject of at least three books.

Now Andre Cayatte (Tomorrow Is My Turn) has derived a lumpish film from it. Love Story would appear to be another inspiration. The lovers in To Die of Love smooch, swoon and suffer with a fervor that would bring a blush of recognition to Jenny Cavilleri's wan cheek.

Cayatte is a former lawyer, and he approaches an audience the way he might have made a summation to a jury: his characters are less people than points in an argument. It is an argument in which sentiment undermines logic: despite the lovers' hardships and separations, Cayatte manages to stage at least one reunion per reel.

Annie Girardot is an exceptional actress, but she is allowed little opportunity to prove it in the role of the teacher. To play her adolescent par amour, Cayatte has chosen Bruno Pradal, 22, an actor who looks no more than 30. Two days before her death, Gabrielle Russier said, "I hope what is happening to me serves some pur pose." The moviegoer can only hope that some higher purpose has been served than this film's.