Lawbolisted Powerful

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

GazerRise Fantastic!

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

treywillwest I mostly enjoyed this film a lot. Certainly it's camera movement and use of deep focus is exemplary. Interestingly, it is only the focal point of the narrative that I found disappointing and over-played. The use of Brahms here strikes me as heavy handed as the use of Satie in Malle's soon-following The Fire Within seemed natural and complimentary. Most scenes struck me as subtly satiric, and I wondered if it wasn't something of an inspiration for The Graduate.

evening1 This film did not blow me away as it did so many others.One significant flaw is the utter lack of chemistry between Jeanne (Jeanne Moreau) and Bernard (the homely Jean-Marc Bory). Jeanne couldn't stop laughing at Bernard's calling her husband a bear? Pul-eeeeese! The sex scene, considered racy in 1958 -- even prompting the arrest of an Ohio theater owner -- looks tepid today. Even the drawn-out seduction scene elicits yawns. Jeanne's muumuu is more Grimms Brothers than Victoria's Secret. And, stretching out in that boat long abandoned in a bog? Ewww...cobwebs and creepy crawlers come to mind!A most distracting element to "The Lovers" is the moral vacuity of its leads. Presumably, Jeanne is not mentally diminished, and she had married Henri (Alain Cuny, clearly embodying one of film history's most thankless roles) of her own free will and not at gunpoint. She hasn't been married long (her daughter's small enough to be lifted) and she lives in the lap of luxury in Dijon, which, while it ain't Paree, boasts sumptuous grounds on a body of water and a retinue of servants to anticipate every need. Jeanne's husband works a lot, but hey, someone's gotta pay the bills. Still, the lady of the house is not content. So one day, she meets Bernard by happenstance, Bernard makes her laugh, Henri invites Bernard over, Jeanne and Bernard cavort when everyone else is asleep, and the two run away together -- without a word of farewell. Er, OK. We are told, as a coda, that Jeanne is afraid but has no regrets. That's nice. I guess the moral of this tale is: When you have a one-night stand, run away with him. He just might be your soul mate! OK, again, I guess. I admit I have long admired the work of Moreau. No one else can so believably pull off "hang-dog" and stunning at the same time.The voice-over narration in this film seems highly derivative of "Jules et Jim" -- yet that memorable film, directed not by Malle but Truffaut, came out four years after this one did! I don't want to end this review without citing the excellent work of Jose Luis de Vilallongo as the somewhat shallow but vulnerable playboy character, Raoul. The tenderness he shows toward Jeanne, and his sensitivity at the Tournier dining table, adds admirable depth and pathos to his character. "I love you because you are quite different," he murmurs to Jeanne, holding her closely while they dance -- "different from all the other women!" Now, that's romance. What woman wouldn't yearn to hear THOSE words? And you can bet Bernard won't be thinking them up...As a great poet opined, "What fools these mortals be."

Claudio Carvalho The bored and empty upper-class Jeanne Tournier (Jeanne Moreau) lives in a manor with many servants in the countryside of Dijon with her husband Henri Tournier (Alain Cuny) and their daughter Catherine. Henri is the editor of The Burgundy Monitor and has been married to Jeanne for eight years, but he does not give much attention to his wife. Jeanne travels frequently to the house of her childhood friend Maggy Thiebaut-Leroy (Judith Magre) in Paris to meet her lover, the famous polo player Raoul Flores (José Villalonga). One day, Henri suspects of the frequent trips of Jeanne to Paris and invites Maggy and Raoul Flores to have dinner and spend the weekend in his mansion. While driving back home from Paris, Jeanne car breaks down and the archaeologist Bernard Dubois-Lambert (Jean-Marc Bory) that is going to Montbard to visit a professor, gives a ride to Jeanne. Henri invites Bernard to stay with them and during the night, he has a love affair with Jeanne. On the next morning, Jeanne decides to go away from Henri, Catherine and Raoul with her new lover. "Les Amants" is the second film of Louis Malle and I can imagine the impact of this amoral story in 1958, with a mother leaving her daughter to seek true love with her younger lover. The muse of many filmmakers Jeanne Moreau is gorgeous and sensual in the role of a woman ahead her time needy for love and happiness. The cinematography in black and white is wonderful and the open conclusion fits perfectly to this sensual film. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Os Amantes" ("The Lovers")

MisterWhiplash Louis Malle had quite a running start in his mid-20's. Following the amazing noir feature Elevator at the Gallows- so hip and cool a film that Miles Davis himself did the score- Malle made The Lovers, a drama about a bored and unfulfilled housewife who has a one-night fling with a man she just met by the side of the road and decides to leave her husband and child for him. This is trivializing, of course, what is an incredibly potent and incredibly bittersweet tale that features a filmmaker so confident with his craft already that romance fills any scene that's required like a shotgun aimed directly at its target. When its at its best, The Lovers reminds us why we love watching people falling in love in the movies (or what the characters think in a moment of passion, as does happen in French films since they are some of the best at it), and as a kicker Malle adds a catch, something that elevates it from something more cynical in tone.The main character Jeanne, played by Jeanne Moreau, is married to Henri, who works well enough that she lives pretty much as a bourgeois. She also has a man on the side, a polo sportsman, and sees him from time to time at sort of programmed-to-be-fun locations like an amusement park. She's obviously unhappy, and one might find this looking at it today to look a little dated, like "oh, she's unhappy, she'll go find someone, I've seen this before." And, in fact, she does find someone else, or rather completely by accident or chance or whichever you'd be willing to pick. Her car breaks down on route to a dinner party with her husband and other friends, and a man, Bernard (Bory), a relative of someone in the bourgeois circle but not one himself, picks her up and drives her there. He is invited to dinner and stay the night, and it's here where we see the two have an incredible and deep connection.I should stop now since I've given away whatever sort of "plot" there is here. The Lovers is foremost a character piece, and Malle knows this so he makes it an incredibly rich film of character. We're not seeing just the basics of people like an unfaithful wife or hard-working and bitter husband or sweet woman best-friend to Jeanne or a stuffy Polo guy or even a dashing man out of the blue. There's a lot more nuance to it than that, more that's tucked under and given clarity by the little moments that threaten to shake everything up, be it just a fly in the room or a bat flying in through the window during dinner, or a mention of a time at an amusement park.One can have an moral problem with what Jeanne does, which is leaving her husband and child for a man she just met. Logically, it's absurd and wrong and all that jazz... but when it's filmed and presented like this, it becomes like a hyper-realistic tale, something that should be fantasy but is too real for these characters to pass off. Part of this is how it's filmed and timed. Henri Decae does the cinematography, and with one or two exceptions (in nit-pick fashion I spotted a boom mic in a couple of scenes that made me feel uneasy for such a highly regarded film, which of course passed), it's gorgeously filmed with light streaming in in that last third with Jeanne and Bernard in the garden and in the bedroom at night, given that hyper-realistic sensation that only happens in heightened romance in movies but made earthy and passionate because of the sincerity of the actors.The other part, I must mention, is Jeanne Moreau. She is one of the most captivating and desirable actresses in the past 50 years, but part of that is even as she is fairly young here (late 20s or just turning 30), something about her face looks older, more experienced in the world, weary. Maybe it's just for the character, but it's something about her that makes this and other parts she played in this star-making period so wonderful. Another actress might have made Jeanne look more unsympathetic. Moreau keeps us thinking about what her character may be thinking, disheartened by life and then rejuvenated by some possibility that terrifies her even more (watch her in the last couple of scenes, it's staggering work in the subtlest of ways), or if something with her character has made her react or feel a way that is only possible because she is playing it a certain way. There's magnetism to her here, which goes a great to making the "hot" scenes with her and her partner so memorable.It's precisely un-pornographic, as if I need to point it out following the Supreme Court's ruling that it was *not* pornographic precisely because the Judge "saw it as such", because of the filmmaker's connection and care for his characters even as they're doing possibly foolish and irreversible choices. It's liberating still 51 years later to see characters allowed to be this passionate and erotic on camera - whatever minor flaws, this has more love and lust going on than 2 dozen rom-coms in America as of late with usually not much regard to the way people actually react and think when thrown into romantic peril. At any rate, Happy Valentine's Day!