What makes a friend?Cézanne et Moiis the story of the friendship between Émile Zola and Paul Cézanne. It is also a complex commentary on friendship itself: what friends owe each other, what friends should do for each other, and what breaks the bonds of friendship.

这部电影可能很难找到;现在正在限量发行，据说将在夏末推出DVD。但这部电影非常值得一看，无论是它对友谊的描述，还是它作为一部电影的美感。纪尧姆·加利安(饰Cézanne)和纪尧姆·卡内(饰左拉)的表演非常棒。Danièle汤普森的导演描绘了1860年巴黎的场景，在他们的色调和普罗旺斯的风景是令人信服的美丽和鼓舞Cézanne的一生。最后，圣维克多瓦山的景色逐渐成为Cézanne最著名的画作之一。

Cézanne and Zola grew up together in Aix-en-Provence, bonded by their unconventional interests in the arts and their response to the bullying of others. They were part of a circle of dissenting artists in Paris during the 1860s and supported one another during their early efforts to gain recognition. They increasingly diverged, however, as Zola achieved economic success from his writing and Cézanne left Paris to return to Provence embittered by his failures. Zola’s novelL’Oeuvre, published in 1886, portrayed the life of a painter who, despondent that his creativity had not been recognized, hanged himself in front of his final painting. Cézanne took the novel as a cruel mockery and their friendship never recovered.

The film’s title,Cézanne et Moi, signals the inequality that was part of the trouble between the two friends. So does the framing of the film: a visit from Cézanne to Zola when they were in their 50s, in which Zola sits calmly behind a grand desk in his elegant study and Cézanne rants about Zola’s exploitation of him in the novel. One of the subtle themes in the film is the corrosive effect of inequality on friendship, from Cézanne’s family’s wealth in contrast to the poverty of Zola’s widowed mother, to Zola’s economic success and widespread recognition, and—particularly meanly—to the infertility of Zola’s marriage in comparison to Cézanne’s satisfaction as a father.

影片中最紧张的时刻之一是左拉一家举办的晚宴，Cézanne是宴会上的客人。Cézanne的行为非常糟糕——他认为这是由于房间里其他人严重缺乏尊重，尤其是左拉。他生气地离开了，回来后坐在楼梯上，窗户开着。在那里，他听到左拉和他的客人嘲笑他，甚至评论说Cézanne离开时，他的画会回到阁楼。当他坐在楼梯上时，Cézanne也和佐拉年迈的母亲站在一起，她因为呼吸困难而出来了。他温柔地帮她脱下紧身胸衣，在电影中依然清晰地显示出他对她的关心，以及左拉对他的关心的认可和感激，以及他对他们友谊的重要性。

Zola’s publication of the novelL’Oeuvrewas a final blow to their friendship, despite all the other bonds that had held them together. Cézanne was deeply wounded by how he was portrayed in the novel as a failure who could only kill himself as a means to artistic integrity. But his hurt went further: he felt used by his friend. In drawing on aspects of his personality and their relationship, Cézanne thought, Zola had treated him not with respect but as an object to be manipulated for Zola’s own purposes. Zola replies that the artist in the novel wasn’t Cézanne, but a fictional character drawn from many different experiences. For Cézanne, this doesn’t matter; what matters is that he had been used by his friend without permission and in a way he found deeply wounding. (Some say that you are friends or family of writers at your risk, others regard fiction as just that—as the authorColm Tóibínwrites about many favorites of Irish literature.)

这里有一个讽刺的比较，在一个小说家的作品和Cézanne自己的艺术实践:在电影中从来没有完全清楚Cézanne是否尊重和征求那些为他裸体摆姿势的模特的同意。也不清楚Cézanne自己在绘画中使用他的朋友或家人是否是他们担心的主题。影片中最后一个讽刺是左拉和Cézanne对待女性的方式，包括左拉与他妻子的一个仆人的长期关系，这个仆人后来成为了他孩子的母亲——Cézanne夸耀他作为父亲的成功，助长了这段关系。

Philosophical theories offriendship回到亚里士多德对友谊的区分:快乐，实用和美德。快乐的朋友分享共同的消遣;在Cézanne, Zola和他们的第三个朋友Batistin Baille的童年玩耍中就有这种元素。这部电影描绘了在艾克斯河游泳的阳光明媚的下午，据说在Cézanne的许多游泳者的画作中都有纪念。

Friendships of utility are rooted in common benefits: the friendships of university students seeking mutual academic success, or of businessmen (and less frequently women) supporting one another as they rise through the ranks. This kind of friendship perhaps best characterizes the relationship between Cézanne and Zola as young artists in Paris—but also reveals its fragility with their growing estrangement and what Cézanne regards as the ultimate of misuse and disrespect.

Friendships of virtue, according to Aristotle, occur when friends admire each other for their characters. InCézanne et Moi在美国，人们也可以看到这种友谊的风险:随着Cézanne变得越来越怨恨，佐拉对他的钦佩减少;随着左拉在生活方式上变得越来越资产阶级化，Cézanne对他的钦佩减少了。Other writers about friendship, such as the feministMarilyn Friedman(What Are Friends For? Feminist Perspectives on Personal Relationships and Moral Theory) explore the importance of mutual care to friendship and the tensions that may arise when people who care for one another deeply also come to judge each other as morally flawed.

Near the end of his life, Zola wrote one of the most famous journalistic protests of all times:J’accuse!.这篇文章抗议了当时法国的反犹太主义、政府的保密和腐败，以及对阿尔弗雷德·德雷福斯(Alfred Dreyfus)的军事法庭审判。Zola was himself charged withcriminal libelas a result ofJ’accuse!and may even have been murdered in its aftermath. In the final scenes ofCézanne et Moi, Zola returns to Aix where he is greeted by a crowd about the Dreyfus affair. Cézanne’s reaction both illustrates the depth of their estrangement and pushes the question of whether he ought, morally, to have recognized the virtues of his former friend no matter how he had been mistreated.