MovieChat Forums > Les enfants du paradis (1946) Discussion > Did Garance really love Baptiste?

Did Garance really love Baptiste?


I am still haunted by this cinematic meditation on love. I can't shake it off. It's so poignant and breaks my heart to think of this story. It's a simple story that has various versions throughout the world, but this is brilliantly told and structured.

We're quite sure that Nathalie loved Baptiste and is the only character who has genuinely loved another human being. The rest are either infatuated, possessive, or in love with the idea of love.

I don't think Garance loved Baptiste. Both she and Baptiste were in love with phantoms of their imagination and an unfulfilled love that didn't get to play out and end like all other affairs. Baptiste was a dreamy idealist who never grew up and escaped to the bastion of his imagination; Garance was just another way for him to escape from the harsh reality of life.

So what do you all think?



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I'd agree that there are complications about every kind of love in he film- including Natalie's, which is obsessively possessive and determined. Baptiste cannot accept Garance's open sexuality and the fact that she can enjoy or use sex regardless of love. However, that does not affect her own love for Baptiste, which is genuine- more genuine than Baptiste's because it does not rest on idealisation of the beloved.

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Thanks for your input.

Both Garance and Baptiste have an idealized love for each other. Nathalie pointed out Garance never had to deal with Baptiste on a day-to-day, pedestrian level, which was something Garance was surprised to be confronted with. I don't really believe in romantic love lasting forever (at least without a lot of conscious work), but a higher love occurs when you know the person's humanity, warts and all. Garance loved an idealized version of Baptiste as much as he loved an idealized version of her. Well, honestly, they never got to know each other really well, did they?

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I guess for me this film ultimately says that love is an emotion, a subjective intangible thing, no matter how you try to break it down and find a precise definition it breaks the mold and finds another form.(Rather like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder)

Love is a dream, an illusion, make-believe, fairy dust, so in a way Baptiste and Garance loved the purest way of all; idealistically.

Just some thoughts and reactions I had from watching this beautiful movie. Golly gee I like it a lot : ) can you tell?





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^Yes :)

And that is why the movie is so poignant, because this idealistic love can never exist in reality.

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I think Garance loved Baptiste but not at the time of their first meetings. Garance fell in love with Baptiste as her life progressed, during the years she spent away from him, and she realized how vapid and empty her life was, living with a man who just saw her as a possession. She had money, nice clothes, nice place to live, etc. but she didn't have the one man she knew loved her purely. The memories of when she was younger and freer and when this young man loved her finally made her fall in love with Baptiste, even enough to give him up at the end.

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Perhaps it is because they have sex that she falls out of love with him- if that is what she does. On the other hand, perhaps Baptiste's own love for Garance may well be just as- or even more- intense because it is sexualised.

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I got the feeling that Garance left Baptiste at the end because of Nathalie and the little boy. She felt guilty caught in the act, that she was breaking up a family; that's why she also left the performance box earlier so that Baptiste wouldn't see her.

Later, Baptiste, by dismissing Nathalie and running after Garance shows the audience whom he truly loved (which we knew all along). He just finally had a chance to prove it to her sexually but Nathalie, the possessive wife, barged in.

It's more interesting to me to conjecture what would happen once Baptiste left the crowd at the end and went back to Nathalie. Would he stay with her and their son, or leave to find Garance again?

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I definately think Garance loved Baptiste. Perhaps not at first, as true love from a man wasn't something she was accustomed to. They did work together regularly in the theater, so I think they were much closer than was portrayed. Indeed, the scene where Baptiste comes in and finds the flowers from a suitor shows that they were used to interacting and working together at the theater on a daily basis. Nathalie I believe, was almost like a childhood sweetheart that latched onto Baptiste and could never think of anyone else in a normal fashion. Indeed I doubt she ever "dated" anyone. The quintessential "clinging vine." She married Baptiste knowing he was still in love with someone else, holding him back from his true self. She wanted him for herself, at any cost. Even if it hurt Baptiste. That is just creepy. Baptiste's need to be alone after Garance's sudden return showed he was still grappling with that place in his heart that Nathalie would never fill. He "settled" for Nathalie due to circumstances beyond his control. Wrong perhaps, but he couldn't break free of his world. Garance also was bound by circumstances. I think the beauty of this film is that it is true for so many people. They end up with the wrong people for the sake of convenience or circumstance, and end up living lives of "quiet desperation."

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I think as far as she knew how to, Garance loved Baptiste but Nathalie's speech about living with the man rather than leaving and returning was powerful and highlighted the shallowness and, perhaps, naivete, in Garance's love.

Someone elsewhere has suggested that Garance and Nathalie are symbolic of different kinds of love and that seems a good way to see what Garance represents to Baptiste and he to her.

Why problem make? When you no problem have, you don't want to make ...

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Garance, Baptiste, and Nathalie all loved destructively.

It's been many years since I started this discussion. I'm still convinced that Garance and Baptiste have been in love with an ideal dream lover and not a real person.

Although Nathalie's love is obsessive and suffocating, she still came close by loving a real person with flaws and by being his rock.

Nothing is more painful that watching a child plead for his father to stay.

Yet, his father is so delirious and drunk on an idealized love that he was oblivious to the trauma his son was experiencing.

Baptiste never fully matured as a man. He lived in a dream world whose main goddess was Garance.

Garance lived a life of luxury and always defaulted to the most convenient arrangement a high-ranking man can offer her. She never really had the guts to really just go with her heart. When she did, it went terribly wrong.

But we know Garance will be fine again. She'll find another benefactor.

Baptiste and his whole family have been destroyed. They'll never be the same again and it will be damn hard for them to find happiness again after this kind of trauma.

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As close as Garance can come to love, yes.

Should keep in mind her horrible upbringing.

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