Joy House

On the French Riviera, Marc is on the run over gambling debts and an affair with a gangster's wife, and hides in a charity shelter. A wealthy widow and her cousin take him into their house as a chauffeur. When he realises a third person is hidden in the villa, the question of who is using whom turns over. Rene Clement directed. Alain Delon plays Marc, Lola Albright the widow, Jane Fonda her cousin Melinda. Fonda was working in France at the time, and this is among the early films of her career outside America. The structure is noir: an enclosed space, lie upon lie, a plan made by the women and a truth understood late. The villa is nearly the only set and the tension comes from that. Clement was among the directors who kept making genre films in French cinema after the Algerian war, and the style here is openly close to American crime pictures. Delon's silent, dangerous, passive presence sits at the centre. Who it is for: viewers who like sixties European noir and Delon. Who it is not for: anyone wanting fast incident; the tension is built slowly.