Les Dames du bois de Boulogne

Hélène realises that her lover Jean has lost interest in her and behaves as though she were arranging the separation herself. Then she sets up her revenge: she finds Agnès, a former dancer, and her mother, arranges a respectable life for them, and engineers Jean into falling in love with Agnès. Jean does not know the past. Hélène does, and she waits. The subject is not love but calculation. Hélène's only weapon is patience; she never shouts, never threatens, she only puts the right people in the right places. That is where the film's coldness comes from. The form does not look like the later Bresson, though the seeds are visible: enclosed spaces, exact framing, performances stripped of excess. Even so, this is the last film in which Bresson used professional actors. The source is an episode from Diderot's novel Jacques le fataliste, which Bresson moved into his own period. The dialogue was written by Jean Cocteau, so two authors' handwriting is on the screen. Shooting fell at the end of the occupation and was prolonged by power cuts. María Casares plays Hélène, Élina Labourdette plays Agnès and Paul Bernard plays Jean. Who it is for: viewers who like classical French cinema and revenge assembled patiently. Who it is not for: anyone expecting Bresson's mature manner; the melodramatic register is still strong here.