I knew Ouspenskaya's name from crossword puzzles; there was a time when "Actress Ouspenskaya" was a common clue for "Maria." ("Actress Bello" has largely taken over these days.) But the name was all I knew until watching her performance as Grandmother Janou in Love Affair.
The story is something of a Hollywood warhorse, having been remade twice, in 1957 (as An Affair to Remember) with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, and in 1994 with Warren Beatty and Annette Bening. This version gives us Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne as Michel and Terry, who meet on a trans-Atlantic cruise. They fall in love, but each is engaged to another. They agree to meet in six months atop the Empire State Building, but on her way to that rendezvous, Terry is struck by a car. She is told that she may never walk again, and chooses not to tell Michel of her condition, not wanting to be a burden to him.
The first half-hour of Love Affair is absolutely delightful; Boyer and Dunne are superb at this light romantic comedy -- she is particularly delightful, and I really must see more of her work -- and their chemistry is palpable. Ouspenskaya enters the picture when their cruise ship stops briefly in Madeira, and Michel takes Terry to visit his grandmother.
Janou lives alone in her home at the top of a hill; she is largely cut off from the world, no longer able to climb the stairs that lead to her home. She has a gardener to tend to her needs and a private chapel, and spends her days in devoted mourning for her late husband. Ouspenskaya was 63 in 1939, but it's not hard to believe her as the grandmother of 40-year-old Boyer; I'd have guessed that Janou was a good decade older than the 77 years she tells Terry.
Janou exists in the movie for one purpose -- to validate the growing love between Michel and Terry. They are, after all, each about to break the heart of their respective fiancees for what may be nothing more than a shipboard fling, and we could easily hate them both for that. Grandmother Janou, so wise, so experienced in love and heartbreak, warms to Terry instantly, telling embarrassing little stories about Michel's childhood and sharing her fear that his womanizing will eventually catch up with him ("One day life will present a bill to Michel, and he will find it hard to pay.")
Ouspenskaya is such a warm and immediately lovable presence that Janou's instant acceptance of their relationship -- she promises to one day give a cherished shawl to Terry, who has admired it -- gives the audience permission to accept them as a couple, and to forgive them for the cruelty they are about to inflict on others. (The movie barely acknowledges the fiancees, not allowing them to register as actual people.)
Unfortunately, the entrance of Grandmother Janou also marks a major shift in the movie's tone. We're no longer in the land of frothy romantic comedy, with frequent references to pink champagne; we're now in a serious romantic drama, and the rest of the movie plods a bit too heavily to the obligatory happy ending.
I kept expecting another scene with Janou after the failed rendezvous. Perhaps she would give Michel an inspirational speech that would lead him to hunt down Terry; perhaps Terry, having recovered from her accident, would journey back to Madeira, knowing that Janou could tell her how to find Michel. But that scene never came; all we get is Michel's visit to the now-empty home of his late grandmother.
A shame, that; the last half of the movie could have used another dose of Ouspenskaya's warmth and charm. It's a tiny performance, barely a glorified cameo -- she's not on screen for more than ten minutes, if that -- but Ouspenskaya has tremendous impact in her brief appearance, and the movie sags a bit when she leaves it.
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