The Lovers

One of Malle's weaker films that plods along and never fully picks up. It's not terrible, and fans of Jeanne Moreau will appreciate it. The history and controversy the film caused is far more interesting than the film itself. If you don't like reading cheap romance novels, then you probably won't like watching one either.

Very simple story (written by the author of Madame De...) about a wife who, caught between an uninterested husband from the fourth estate and an aristocratic beau whose main interest lies in hitting a ball with a stick while riding a horse, discovers the possibility of a Third Way (as Giddens and Blair would say). A tender, unsentimental and open portrait of a woman realising how unimportant most of one's life can seem when confronted with a risk that one must take in order to feel alive.

If the female voiceover suggests a cheeky rebuke of Flaubert, the sinews of his sentences find a mesmeric mirror in Malle's compositions, so studied and layered, charting the carnage wrought by these piggish provincials as they try to convince themselves that their floundering has been dignified by melodrama. Moreau tasting herself on her lips is certainly hotter than anything else Justice Stewart could possibly have had the opportunity to define.

The cinematography plus Brahms plus Jeanne Moreau equals gorgeousness.

Great directional effort by master Louis Malle. But the story is that same old crap about a woman tired of her rich husband, finding a lover, then another lover, then leaving her family (including her little daughter) and everything is built like if it was a beautiful romance. But again, I insist on the qualities of the direction, Malle seems to be able to do anything, anytime he wants it.

It plays out like a Harlequin romance novel: bored bourgeois housewife with a boring bourgeois lover finds true love in a moonlit night of steamy passion. Moreau brings a small amount of complexity to the role, which is really the film's saving grace. I found myself disliking the character... despite the attempts to gain my sympathy in her rebelling against her conventional lifesytle, she still struck me as tremendously selfish and thoughtless. I was mostly unimpressed although mildly intrigued.

Os amantes estreava há 65 anos no Festival de Veneza. Ninguém resiste a cunnilingus bem feito, né non? Filme extremamente lírico que foi conspurcado pela minha leitura de Asfalto Selvagem do Nelson Rodrigues porque volta e meia eu ria lembrando da obsessão do Dr. Odorico por esse filme. Box OP Louis Malle.

The first half is a bunch of people of varying degrees of vapidity having banal conversations about their empty lives. Then, just after the halfway point, some magic happens: Jeanne Moreau and Jean-Marc Bory find each other in the moonlight. It's not hard to understand--he is, it seems, the only man she's come across who's not a total twit. Great directing, especially considering it's only Malle's second feature film. And he uses one of my favorite chamber music works, the Brahms B-flat Sextet.

Moreau is so good in this film and Henri Decaë shoots the interlude with such a dreamy, painterly touch that I think I'm just being a cad by demanding plausibility.

What a lot of modern feminist movies have been chasing

Pretty conventional apart from the blistering last 30 minutes. Mostly Moreau's show as a rich woman in boredom desperately looking for a spark, a blast, a moment of true pleasure -- only found with a stranger, on a boat, on a bed and on the road to nowhere.

Touro

The sequence directly after they fall in love is wonderful, I do not care for the rest.

Malle kickstarts his feature filmmaking with this romance drama about a Bovarie-type played by Jeanne Moreau. The themes are not uncommon in French cinema, but Louise de Vilmorin's script is mature and delicate, and Malle shows great directorial talent - it's all done right and pleasurable to look at. Nowhere is it crude, but one detects a certain candor, especially in the love scenes, that may explain why controversy followed its release.

85.500

The scandal provoked by this film which led to a legal definition of pornography is sort of amazing to conceive when you watch it. It's not a sexually explicit film at all. Apart from that, well, Malle is a fantastic director and Jeanne Moreau is as captivating as always, but I wasn't at all invested in the story the film had to tell or on the characters. It just sort of passed along for me.

Hm...polo and a wiener dog in the first couple minutes (I knew I was in trouble from the get-go). Good cast and direction and look...and it definitely does appear to be a New Wave bridgehead; but it looks like it was a concept first before it had characters (so the characters never really became fully fleshed out). This effect became more pronounced in the second half, so the overall result was (to me at least) a bit silly.

Through an illicit, life-shifting affair Louis Malle conveys pleasant and soft-hearted romance. In fact this is among the sweetest, most tender films I've ever seen. Jeanne Moreau sulks it up beautifully; her stony features and longing eyes fit the unsatisfied and uncertain lead role like a glove. Henri Decae's photography is gorgeous as usual, using bold, crisp black & white.