Les amants

You've got it all, excepting a sad marriage, hubby's not interested, in your wagon or carriage, so you spend the weeks in Paris, watching polo has its merits, but at the weekend you return, to the disparage. Circumstances mean acquaintances will visit, a bit closer than just friends is Raoul Flores, but a breakdown on the way, causes detour and delay, and an extra guest now joins the home foray.

Jeanne Moreau, one of the most eye-catching actors of her day plays Jeanne Tournier, a woman oozing dissatisfaction with her home life in rural Dijon, wants to be dazzled by the sights and sounds of Paris, but has her attentions distracted quite unexpectedly when she is forced to arrange a weekend soirée in the marital mansion.

Fanciful stuff, and a little bit daft.

As a twenty-something, I saw this film with my boyfriend of the time, and as soon as it was over, we rushed home to do it ourselves. In the early-to-mid sixties, "Les Amants" was eroticism that was certainly explicit--albeit tastefully explicit, to our naive eyes. Made when Malle was twenty-five, with the young Jeanne Moreau, to the romantic Sextette that Brahams wrote when he was 27, this was the perfect sexy romance for its time and place.

I just saw it again, now watching as a sixty-something in an age in which "Les Amants" would probably get an R rating--and a tame one. I'm jaded too. It's hard to feel much sympathy for a desperate housewife of the upper middle class as she battles ennui. But the love sequence is still a knockout. You can't stop to think about it as the lovers, who as yet barely know each other except for their terrific physical attraction, go from garden-to-boat- to bedroom; it's still erotic in its implication. the garden is too lovely to be true, the boat is white and clean, and Moreau wears her pearl necklace throughout, but the message of a woman who has only known pedestrian sex being introduced for the first time to the Real Thing rang a bell with me (I had a similar experience, minus the garden, the pearls and the boat). I sat there bawling my head off-- with nostalgia this time for an unrecoverable experience-- through the whole sequence.

But the ending also rings true. What do you do when you come up for air?

From one of the interviews on the CD, I learned that the plot was based on an 18th century story, and I can readily see that, just as could see the fin-de-siècle Viennese origin of Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut." In neither case does the contemporary updating of the tales make them any less effective.

This is my first Louis Malle film and I found myself really quite disappointed. One of the other posters says that the theme is about freedom and uncertainty. I would agree with this, but to be blunt a better way to learn about the subject would be to listen to the Brahms' String Sextets without the film.

Jeanne Moreau has been described in this movie as inscrutable, I'd agree with that, in this film we find out absolutely nothing of interest about her character, and I'm left perplexed as to the attraction Bernard had for her (purely libidinous?). The morality of the film is very confusing, certainly we can applaud Jeanne's existential urge to escape from her stifling fling, her marriage, and her Parisienne lifestyle, but the fact that she leaves her daughter behind is execrable. The woodland scenes are intriguing but a bit too contrived. If you want to see films about relationships I would suggest most of the oeuvre of Ingmar Bergman, which is far superior.

All in all a rather insipid, though beautiful, mess. Deserves 7 out of 10 because it is provocative and like all good art, subversive.

Jeanne Tournier is a bored middle-aged woman. She lives in comfort with her wealthy husband, children and small army of maids and servants but yet she is not happy. Her husband is distant and spiteful while her relationship with a polo-playing lover has become stale and tiresome. Returning from one of her many "trips to Paris", Jeanne's car breaks down and she is helped by a young student who takes her back to her home where he is invited to join the Tournier's and their guests for dinner. He stays the night and quickly starts to peal away the layers of frustration and offer her something else if she is brave enough to take it.

Although it probably says more about America than the shock value of this film, the fact that this was legally classed as "not pornography" brought it a success that continues to this day and was the main reason I decided to join those who had seen it by seeing it. From a content point of view I must admit that I found it hard to get into Jeanne as a character because the film did sort of expect us to accept her adultery and sex as part of her escaping and growing in some way – a thing that will not always be true, sometime people just cheat and there is no reason for it other than the most basic. However, unless this really bothers you, there is still much to enjoy in the character if not totally in the story. The plot is basic but the writing and delivery allows for enough to engage although, as I said, it may annoy as much as please, it depends on your point of view.

Like her character or not, Moreau is certainly powerful and assured in her performance and she seems to really understand the complexities of her character – never judging or excusing anything to a point where it would be overdone. Her body language is as convincing as her dialogue and she is really a good reason for watching the film – hell, she almost makes you believe her character's reasoning and have sympathy for her (almost). The support cast are all good with similarly natural performances from Bory, Magre, de Villalonga and others; however the film belongs to Moreau in terms of performances. The other main reason for watching is the crisp and stylish direction from Malle and the wonderful black and white photography. Although it has long lost its shock value today, the love scene is pretty strong stuff considering the period.

Overall this will not appeal to the masses because it is pretty slow and is all about complex inner issues that do not lend themselves to clear plotting, easy answers or pace. This is not to say that it can cope with these problems well, because it doesn't totally manage it and it does come off a little "up itself" in how it presents some of the issues but the direction, cinematography and acting all make it worth seeing, meanwhile the material will engage whether you are annoyed by it or sympathise with it.

Paris in the 1950s. Film opens with Jeanne & Maggy, two glamorous high society aristocrats, watching a polo game, cheering the star player, the equally glamorous society page poster man Raoul Flores. Later, cozy snuggling between Raoul and Jeanne who, we learn when she goes home, is married to another man -- a prominent newspaper publisher, Henri. Over dinner, we observe quickly that Jeanne and Henri's marriage has been on deep freeze for sometime inside that capacious, ornately furnished countryside mansion. Henri, more or less convinced of Jeanne's affair with Raoul, insisted on having Jeanne invite Maggy and the polo player for the weekend. On her way back from Paris that weekend Jeanne's sports car breaks down. She's given a ride by archaeologist Bernard, definitely proletariat, definitely more comfortable studying rocks from diggings than at the polo field. Henri invites Bernard to stay for the weekend with Raoul and Maggy. At dinner Bernard shown to be an obvious outsider of this group. After everyone goes to bed, Jeanne wanders out into the night in her white, diaphanous nightgown, starting the forty-minute final sequence, the heart of the movie. This is the mildly sensuous moonlit epiphany for Jeanne that true love still can happen. (This sequence was deemed "shockingly erotic" in 1958 when the movie was released, becoming the main reason for calls for censorship, if not outright banning, in many countries). In a long sequence of lyrical black and white, day-for-night shots of shadows in the moonlight, a long walk on a vast field of shrubs and flowers, delicate embraces on a cozy boat floating unaided on a stream, Jeanne falls for Bernard's non-aristocratic, nonhigh-society, proletariat charms. Maybe it is the moonlight, or Bernard's open collar, working-archaeologist shirt, or his 2-cylinder mini-car, or the portentous bat that flew into the room when they were dining, but at the break of dawn, Jeanne decides to leave everything, including her sleeping daughter (another reason which shocked the critics and the Catholic church into condemning this movie) and drive away with Bernard into a new day aborning. (As far as I can remember this is the first movie I know where the central characters, at the fade-out, ride into the sunrise instead of into the sunset. One extra point for the then 25-year old Louis Malle). This movie has acquired its "classic status" for several reasons: It was a notable (and controversial!) work from a young director who was just starting to get noticed (Malle's fifth movie, his second for 1958). It portrayed succinctly the phoniness of the affluent as it showed a portrait of a woman confined within the rituals of her social status and then acting on her sudden feeling to get out. It presented a sex scene considered bold and shocking at that time (Jeanne's orgasm shown only through a close-up of her trembling hand is I think a clever idea from Malle). And it has Jeanne Moreau. (Although for me, anything with Jeanne Moreau is automatically on my personal "classic" list). Even by today's standards I think this is a very well-made movie if only for the subtlety with which Malle presented how these characters show the spectrum of their raw feelings. Moreau is "on every frame" (Malle's words from a 1994 interview) and perfectly so. She shows the build-up in Jeanne's simmering feelings so flawlessly, we actually feel the tension of when it's going to explode. Magre is pure delight as the fully-enjoy-the-moment Maggy. De Villalonga captures perfectly the unctuous charms of someone who's enraptured with his own image, endlessly watching and listening to himself in his own head. Cuny is admirably subtle in showing Henri as someone who has really stopped caring a long time ago, just enjoying watching these people make fools of themselves, eventually to choke on their own flirtations. Note his stiff indifference watching Bernard drive away with Jeanne. In the Moreau performances I've seen, I think this is one of her finest. In her every movie, the main tension is her eyes -- no one really knows what's going on behind that hypnotic stare. Love, passion, hatred, murder, tenderness, bewilderment? We always have to wait for the end of the movie. Some clever prefiguring clues Malle gives us: The bat flying in during their dinner causing a brief consternation -- their fortress has been breached, their aristocracy is not invulnerable anymore. Bernard's mini-car, slow but unstoppable in the highway -- stability, simple and quiet persistence. Bernard freeing the fishes from Henri's traps -- obviously about Jeanne. Excellent, luminous restoration from Criterion of this stunningly photographed black and white film by Henri Decae. Extras include two interviews from Malle and one from Jeanne Moreau. ##