Fair point. (Made over a year ago!)
I will add though that for me, Francois Truffaut provided enough explanation for the blokes' attraction to Catherine, in more ways than just the one line, "c'est une vraie femme". This is why I would question calling their obsessive adherence to Catherine "bewildering".
I hope my ideas below help you to get as much pleasure as I did from "J &J"!
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REASONS WHY J&J DO WHAT THEY DO:
1) PHYSICAL ATTRACTION
They fell in love with the smile of a statue shown in the projection room by Albert, to the point where they travel across the world to see the original. Then Catherine arrives, with the same smile.
This could be taken literally - they fell in love with a statue, and rather forunately runs into its real-life spitting image.
OR, maybe each of the three men, J, J and Albert push the others to fetishise a concept of femininity up to the point where they will transpose it on anyone - i.e. They convince themselves that Catherine is something she isn't...
2) THE MEN'S FASCINATION WITH WOMEN
In the opening sequence the men are emphatically characterised by their attraction to women: Jim is a player who sees girls all the time, Jules is shy with a history of women back in Germany but bad luck in Paris.
It's already clear that both men are willing to devote a great deal of their attention to women. And Catherine, as Jules says, is a "queen" - she wants ALL of their attention. Evidence (amongst other things) - Jules and Jim are playing dominos, on holday with C early in the film; they are ignoring C who wants someone to scratch her back. She won't give in, eventually slapping Jules on the face. (His reaction, hearty laughter, shows he enjoys these moments of spontaneity.)
They want to give her attention - she wants the attention.
Another reason why Jules might devote himself to C, at least initially, is his recent "dry spell" of love - he has even gone to a prostitute (see opening seq). Whether C exploits this desparation or not is up to you.
3) C'S PERSONALITY
Both men are energetic, creative, spontaneous, intelligent, independent people who don't care about money (i.e. yer standard New Wave protaganist types). This is made abundantly clear from the opening credits.
C is also energetic (eg. the bridge race), creative (acting as "Thomas"), spontaneous (jumping into the Seine), intelligent (her multilingualism) and independent (Jim never knows what's going on in her head). She is also loaded (from a rich family, drives a car) but arguably, like them, immaterial - takes more pleasure out of adventure than consumption.
The point is - they've got loads in common! No wonder J and J care about her. (Although whether we as the spectator dig the New Wave "young Turk" personality type is up to us...)
4) THE FIRST WORLD WAR
I would agree that in the second half of the film C becomes less sympathetic, for one reason or another. Her own motives for the antagonistic behaviour could be:
a)feeling trapped with the domestic situation,
b)missing Jim,
c)getting p'ed off with Jules' clinginess,
d)the onset of motherhood...
pick your own, just imagine you have the 'New Wave' type personality traits listed above and put yourself in her newly domesticated situation.
What has changed for the MEN, though? - Well, they've fought in a horrible war, which is the focus of several minutes of stock footage, voiceover and scenes with Jim in the cemetaries.
(...This came to mind after thinking about Jim's long story about his war friend in the trenches, who fell in love with a girl he met once and "conquered her heart" in his letters, before dying on the eve of Armistice Day.)
Each man, Jules and Jim, has also undergone a psychological transformation in the trenches which Truffaut doesn't even try to explain - they hardly ever talk about it. But they have had time to reflect on their own existence after an extreme situation which separated them from their loved ones.
I would imagine that after the war, C has more of a symbolic value than she did before, representing to the men:
a) security - after years of being in a perilously insecure position in the trenches, C comes along and says she loves the men and care for them unreservedly;
b) former, happier times, before the horrors of war arrived;
c) the spontaneity and creativity, the living-for-the-moment that neither Jules nor Jim can fully regain after their time in the war - each has been forced to confront the big questions about what it means to kill, to die, to make the most of one's life. (I think this "existentialist" theme is common to the New Wave films.)
Evidence - Jim in the bar in Paris, surrounded by people that rush past him saying hi, talking about what they are doing, but he's not seeming to interact with life in the way he used to - he seems quieter, more introverted.
Evidence 2 - When Jim arrives at their house on the Rhein after the war, he recounts the story of how he was told he could never be a diplomat - only a "curieux", one of those types that goes from country to country, searching for answers. He says he detests this life. This reflection exeplifies his new metaphysical side, and to him, C's spontaneity, her 100% devotion to the moment, could be a kind of supplement which he longs for. (Jules in the meantime seems equally reflective - he comes up with gloomy quotes in German, ceaselessy analyses the menage-a-trois situation, and has become C's worshipper, calling her his queen, as though it keeps him mentally together.)
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OK well the bugger is that I can defend Truffaut but I can't defend your opinion of Catherine - at the end of the day, if you don't like a main character, it can undermine a lot of the film.
I hope that the points above, if not helping you to like her, help you to empathise with the characters and understand what could be their motivations, therefore to care a bit more about the film.
Which I do :)
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