François Ozon | Regarde la mer (See the Sea) / 1997, USA 1998

love, look away!

by Douglas Messerli

 

François Ozon (screenwriter and director) Regarde la mer (See the Sea) / 1997, USA 1998

 

Sasha (Sash Hails), of English birth, lives with her husband in the idyllic seaside village on France’s Île d'Yeu. But although her life may seem charmed, her business man husband is often away on trips, and Sasha, who we soon come to see as a young sensualist, is left alone to care for their infant daughter, Siofra, which does not leave her much time to enjoy the landscape and beauty around her. Sasha obviously loves her daughter, but is also clearly uncomfortable with her constant needs.

    We see her frustrations in the very scene of the film when, awakened by her infant daughter, she has difficulty, with child in hand, to even make herself breakfast. A call to her husband fails, and another in which explains that he will be longer away than he originally planned, makes clear her disappointment and loneliness. We might even suspect, and perhaps she does, that his business trips involve some other sexual tryst, but that would turn this film into a soap opera, which Ozon never allows his quirky films to become.

     Enter a young female drifter, Tatiana (Marina de Van), who simply asks for permission to camp in the yard for a day or three. Unlike Sasha, Tatiana is not tied down by familial burdens, and seems to be totally independent, something which we already suspect Sasha admires. But, at first, the married woman is wary about giving permission, particularly since her husband is not home. When assured that it will be only a quick stay of a night or two, however, changes Sasha’s mind. Moreover, she is obviously quite fascinated by the woman who seems to completely in control of her own life. It’s clear that she reminds Sasha of her former self, before the commitments she has now undertaken.

     Tatiana sets up her tent, and Sasha proceeds with her day. But when dinner arrives, she invites the girl in, and begins a rather reluctant friendship, while yet noting the oddities of her new guest, particularly her almost animalistic manner of eating, swallowing down her food as if she has been starved, picking up the plate and licking it clean.

      She behaves in an equally bestial way when she uses the house bathroom, leaving her turds in the toilet, unflushed, wiping down some of the debris with Sasha’s toothbrush. As Tatiana has expressed it, when asked by Sasha whether she gets scared in her travels: “No. I do the scaring.”

      Yet when Titiana admits that prior to her hiking trip without a destination that she worked as a nanny to a wealthy family, Sasha herself decides, the very next day, the leave her daughter in the care of the child while she runs for some needed groceries, and a very few moments at least, some time to enjoy herself, a simple visit to a nearby café for coffee and a sweet.

      She quickly returns home, however, somewhat worried about Siofra, but finds the child safe and well-cared for.

      The next day, she even invites her new yard guest on a trip to the nearby beach, planning to enjoy the sun with her new friend in a nice lunch and conversation. But she discovers that Tatiana has little conversational skills and instead of looking, as would most beachgoers, toward the sea, looks back to the surrounding woods, watching the gay men enter for illicit sex, scene that could be right out of the Alain Guiraudie’s 2013 film Stranger by the Lake. When asked by Sasha what she sees, her answer is blunt: “Some guys fucking.”

      Titiana shows absolutely no interest in anything the beachgoers, male or female, might offer. “I’m bored. I’m leaving,” she declares.

       It has become apparent, even before this scene, that Sasha is curious about Tatiana not only as an individual but as a sexual being. And now, we discover just how much of a sexual being Sasha really is, as she wraps the sleeping Siofra carefully to protect her fun the sun, while she sneaks off the woods, discovering a man there who perfectly willing to engage I heterosexual behavior. She has a quickly sexual rendezvous that is not at all so very different from the quick fucks and suck offs which gay men seek out in such a place.

     That Sasha is so tempted by the allure of that woods that she is even willing to leave her child alone for a short while, indicates something we soon have affirmed when the next day, when she speaks with Tatiana about child birth. Tatiana cannot imagine the pain a woman has to suffer to bear a child and asks if Sasha has had a cesarean rather than a vaginal birth. Sasha argues that she wanted to feel the experience of the pain, insisting upon a vaginal birth with no drugs.

     Tatiana continues to question her about vaginal tearing, where she shat or not, etc., all questions which Sasha suggests will lead the young girl to never have a baby. “I already had one,” Tatiana blurts out. When asked where it is, the girl simply answers, “Dead.” When the empathic Sasha expresses her sadness, Tatiana simple declares she had it aborted.

     That statement again stresses the complete difference between these women. Earlier in the day, while Titiana was out, Sasha has snuck into the woman’s tent, noticing a day book within which is written over and over, a repetition of words and drawings of hangings and other symbols of death.

    Sasha, as I mentioned earlier in this essay is nearly all sensation, while Titiana seems to be almost asexual and emotionless. She does not dine in delight, she devours food like a beast. She does not watch the sea in wonderment but turns her back on the endless waves and the people they attract equally.

     Janet Maslin’s summary the scene above in The New York Times well expresses the horror underlying this scene:

 

“Ozon, whose eerie exactitude owes strong debts to Chabrol and Polanski, builds this simple film to unexpected heights of irony and horror. Late in the story, for instance, the two women share dinner as Tatiana abruptly asks Sasha what childbirth was like. In complacent yuppie fashion, Sasha proudly answers that she took no drugs because she wanted to experience the pain. All Tatiana has to do to set your hair on end at a moment like this is simply to listen, her expression perfectly blank, her eyes dead.”

 

     Even Sasha suspects there is something very different about this woman; but that too attracts her and before the night is out, she offers the girl a bed in the house instead of another night on the ground. By this time, we also realize that Sasha has grown so intrigued by Titiana that she would not at all mind exploring her body in sex.

    And, despite her insensitivity, even Titiana now clearly perceives that fact. For a while both women lay in bed in their respective rooms. But later we see Titiana rise, enter Sasha’s room and remove her blouse as if preparing for sex.

     The next day, the husband (Paul Raoux) returns home, a young handsome man who we realize might be the perfect mate for the attractive Sasha. But his wife and daughter are nowhere to be found.

     He finally discovers the tent in his backyard, unzips its flap, and finds there his wife’s bound naked body, her vagina sewn shut. You may want to look away yourself from what you now witness. This is a world in which both women look away from love

      We watch a ferry on which Tatiana now rides with the couple’s continually crying child now in hand. She has found a way to have a child without having to suffer sexual intercourse or the pain of birth. She has found a child without daring to love.

 

Los Angeles, April 14, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (April 2026).