You don’t need a degree in psychology or history to realize that the
past is always with us. You can’t escape its impact. Its memory will
leave with feeling of guilt but also haunting regressions of past
loves: familial, platonic and romantic. If you’re a filmmaker, whether
in the seat of the director or the writer, you need the skill to bring
an audience along for the ride, which in the case of “Unforgiveable”
involves the passage of years, even decades. That’s where André Téchiné
comes into the picture, so to speak. Téchiné, considered by some to be
France’s greatest living director, is remembered by film buffs for
telling complex stories in exotic or provincial settings, honing in on
the travails of youth as in “Wild Reeds,” linking two eighteen-year-old
friends, the brother of one who marries to escape the war in Algeria,
and a bond between one young man and a classmate who wants to marry his
brother’s wife.
