That Most Important Thing: Love

Shining through L'Important C'Est D'Aimer is a genuine sense that love enables us to transcend the most degrading experiences.

The film, although fascinating, is also slightly boring.

At once electrifying and eviscerating.

Zulawski's third feature and his first made in France, is in certain respects among his most restrained. (It may be a good introduction to his work.)

Zulawski's fluid, roving camera, favoring medium shots and close-ups, and accompanied by Georges Delerue's full-throated score, is so attentive to every pang, twinge, or slightest hint of agony that it seems to expose the characters' every nerve.

This isn't the realm of sentimentality, because love here is violent and obsessive and all-encompassing.

When a distributor asked what the film was really about, Źuławski responded, “The Important Thing Is to Love.” That theme dominates a romantic triangle, but in a thoroughly unconventional way, characteristic of the entire film.

...the first French feature by Polish expatriate Andrzej Zulawski, is a romantic drama of frustrated desires, frail relationships and explosive passions directed with understated intimacy.

The winner of the very first Best Actress Cesar Award, besting fellow French icons Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Adjani and Delphine Seyrig, was Romy Schneider, who won her prize for her performance in this edgy endeavor.

Accompanied by an insistent, sinister score, its depiction of bohemian excess and depravity in the arts community betrays a conservative streak not unlike that found in slasher flicks.