Balzac: A Passionate Life

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• 1999
• 3 hr 0 mins
• Documentary, Drama
• PG-13

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Honoré de Balzac was a man who lived to write. His life was a hard, permanent struggle, from his cold relationship with his mother who was unable to give him the love he needed, to his unsuccessful attempts to make money out of printing and publishing books. Balzac never gives up, however--even though his dissolute lifestyle keeps landing him in trouble with his creditors. To finally gain acclaim for his works and earn enough money to survive, Balzac works like a man possessed, day and night, to the brink of exhaustion, drinking liter upon liter of coffee to keep himself awake. The passionate author also tends to go to excess in affairs of the heart; he has several woman friends at the same time, all of them very different from one another. They include kind, caring, elderly Madame de Berny; and egotistical, ambitious Laure d'Abrantès, who introduces Balzac to the salons of upper-class society. Balzac's heart belong to just one woman, however: Eve Hanska, a married Polish woman living in Russia. At first she and Balzac simply have a passionate exchange of correspondence, but then they meet for the first time in Switzerland. On his return to Paris, Balzac is mortified to learn of Madame de Berny's; he's all the more shocked because she was the only person who loved him as a man, rather than as a literary idol. Balzac also has a series of unlucky experiences in his work at that time: whatever he tries to do always turns out to be a naive and unrealistic dream. Although his new works are being well-received socially and do start to bring him a small income, Balzac's financial situation becomes ever more desperate because of his dissolute, excessive lifestyle. When Eve Hanska's husband dies, Balzac wants to fulfill his greatest wish and marry the woman he has loved for so many years. When Eve miscarries their child, Eve has a miscarriage and loses their child, Balzac is totally shaken by this event, while Eve is strangely unconcerned. Does she too only love him for his artistic reputation? The long-awaited marriage finally takes place in Russia after years of delay, but Balzac doesn't have long to enjoy marital bliss: he goes blind, and dies a slow and agonizing death just four months later. Only his friend Victor Hugo remains by his side until the very end.