Les amants (1958)

Second viewing (first one: June 16, 1996).

English title: The Lovers.

The wife of a rich newspaper owner living in Dijon thinks she is not getting enough attention from her husband. She goes to Paris periodically to see her lover, a polo player. A series of events will affect her in unpredicted ways.

A bourgeois fantasy and, as such, inevitably simplistic. Owning a rightwing newspaper, playing polo, doing archeological research, what is the difference between them? One might say that the first acts to keep the state of things, the second benefits from it, the third washes his hands. The fourth player is a woman, which means she does not play at all, except as a lover, how's that for feminism? (At the time, even that was considered an advancement.) The major excuse for the film's existence is its aesthetics. It is all very well filmed, and the night outdoors sequence is dazzling. The dialogue, on the other hand, by the author of Madame de..., is ludicrously artificial.

Rating: 65 (down from 81)