Du jour au lendemain

A minimalistic black-and-white recording of the performance of the opera of the same name by German composer Arnold Schoenberg (premiere in 1930; libretto: Max Blonda, which is a pseudonym of Gertrude Schoenberg, the author's wife). The story takes place in a single room of a middle-class couple's apartment, who return from a party in the late hours and balance their marital relationship. The aging man wishes to escape the boredom and constraining mundane worries of a well-ordered family life, but after his wife returns the favor, he gladly returns to the tracks of a contented bourgeois life upon sobering up in the morning. The traditionally economical and hypnotically simple style of Straub + Huillet, who took Schoenberg as their model in their other film Moses and Aaron (1974). (20/11/2013)