It seems inherently narcissistic to make a documentary about your own love life, but somehow director Chloé Barreau has produced a work in which she, the central subject, is almost a ghostly presence in a more universal exploration of human relationships.
Twelve of Chloé Barreau’s ex-lovers sit down to be interviewed about their time with Chloé, by a third party interviewer. Presented in chronological order, from first infatuations to friends-with-benefits, secret trysts and relationships, they paint a portrait of a woman coming to terms with her own sexuality, power and place in the world. Illustrated with archive camcorder footage and photographs by Barreau, Fragments of a Life Loved evokes a time and place long gone but filled with nostalgia and, yes, ultimately, love.
Every one of Barreau’s exes presents us with a different angle on the same woman. Barreau is presented as a romantic, a seducer, a liar, an egotist and it is through the similarities and differences we start to understand who this woman is. Barreau is obsessed with love, and the push/pull desires of Generation X queers who were coming out into a world still wrestling with how we fit into society. Barreau’s behaviour is the mix of the desires and fears of a pre-Internet age.
Barreau herself is more a catalyst to get a group of men and women to talk about their experiences of love and relationships. This multiplicity of opinions says more about our collective idea of romance than about any one woman and Barreau’s history of lovers is incredibly diverse. Straight men and women, bisexuals, lesbians and one gay man, they push and pull at the traditional boundaries of sexuality and romantic liaisons.
One says when Barreau entered her life it was “like an attack”, such was her magnetism. Another comments on her “shy and malicious face”. Her lover Rebecca says, “She saw something in me I didn’t see in myself,” before cutting her down by adding, “She was a liar.” One more decries the way Barreau used her “romanticism” as an excuse for her hurtful behaviour. Some of the exes have not spoken to her since their parting decades before, but none are surprised by the endeavour. Anne (who has, hands down, the sexiest voice you’ve heard in a while) says “The past is more mysterious than the future.”
As Fragments of a Life Loved continues though it becomes less about interpersonal relationships and more about the passage of time. Through their reminiscences of their own stories, who they were when they met Chloé and who they have become, there is a mix of sadness, regret, growth and understanding. Now mostly middle-aged, the interviewees still hold onto an element of passion as if it were a core part of their personality – it is the one commonality between them all, and perhaps what drew Barreau to them. In one revealing moment, one lover confronts an off-camera Barreau directly and the fire is clearly still burning.
The overarching romance of the feature is aided by Barreau’s footage, charting her time in Paris, before moving to Rome – two of the most beautiful and romantic cities in the world. It’s in this footage of usually banal, everyday life that we get a glimpse of Barreau herself, caught in the reflection of a mirror.
Fragments of a Life Loved is a fascinatingly human look at the vast, amorphous, ineffable thing we call love. Tonally I was left with a desire to rewatch Richard Linklater’s Before Trilogy, or Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites. It perfectly encapsulates an age of optimism, hormones, pain and triumph that is much more than just one woman’s life.
Fragments of a Life Loved receives its Australian Premiere at the 11th Queer Screen Film Feston September 1st, 2024. For more details and to purchase tickets head to queerscreen.org.au.
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