Grains de beauté

Beauty Spot follows with a few changes the plot of a German film Opernredoute from the year before and benefits from some playful French humor about flirtation and mistaken identity.

The director Pierre Caron uses a few more closely staged scenes than his colleague Leonce Perret, a veteran of silents credited with the French adaptation, might have, as one can see by comparing with the Perret directed Apres L'Amour from the same year also at Pathe where there are more scenes taken at a distance.

The standout moments are the beautifully lit and staged ones in the home of the diplomatic attaché which the attache's friend visits at night in the dark after rather sneakily following home the masked blonde at the black and white party, without knowing that woman is the attaché's wife.

A tip of the hat here to art director Jacques Colombier who worked on a number of these early 30s Pathe productions.

I wasn't familiar with the names of any in the cast except for character actress Jeanne Fusier-Gir who enjoys herself immensely as the wife's cousin, a wild party going type who loves her liquor.

The film didn't get a US distribution though the previous German version of the story did.