This is not a story of great deeds but rather of great understanding. Joanna Scott (Linda Hamilton) is a woman whose success in her profession, writer, is matched by the failure in her personal life. With her marriage suddenly on the rocks because, as her husband Dale (Stewart Bick) puts it, "She is still the same woman I married," Joanna finds herself cast adrift in a world in which she can find no comfort. Even the opportunity to visit Paris, to interview the famous, or infamous, Madame Simone (Jacqueline Bisset), an "Arranger" of meetings between wealthy men and beautiful young women, cannot draw her back into life, and it is only her desire to flee which leads her to accept the assignment. What she finds is much different than what was expected. "Madam" Simone, though worldly as only the French seem to be, is not selling sex but illusion. Were this movie set in the last century I suspect she would be immediately recognized as a matchmaker. As would be expected, Simone's intuitive sense reveals to her Joanna's estrangement from herself, the meat of this movie being the manner in which she instills in Joanna a new sense of self. Through it all, I was struck by the genuineness of the character's reactions, even when Joanna is caught "researching" a porno. Francesco (Paolo Seganti) the photographer working with her on the article, plays his part as well by allowing her to see herself as he sees her in a series of artistic photographs. Predictably they commence an affair, which, unlike many of Hollywood's portrayals of women, Joanna ends. Joanna's subsequent return to America serves to demonstrate the effects of her transformation and her control of her own life.
