The Lovers

Jeanne lives in a large house in the country near Dijon. Her husband owns a newspaper and is busy with it; the marriage has been silent for a long time. She goes regularly to Paris, stays with a friend and has a lover. That too has become a routine. One day her car breaks down on the way back and a stranger picks her up. She has to ask him to dinner; her husband, her lover and the stranger sit at the same table. In the middle of the night she cannot sleep and goes out into the garden. Louis Malle directs. Jeanne Moreau plays Jeanne. The film won the special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1958. Its night section caused argument at the time; the scene does not show sex directly, but building the narrative from the woman's view was unusual. In America the film became the subject of an obscenity case; it went as far as the Supreme Court, and the 1964 ruling is often cited in arguments about how obscenity is defined. A movement from Brahms's string sextet is used throughout and is the only sound in the night scene. Malle was in his twenties and this was his second feature; the film falls in the years when a change of generation was beginning in French cinema. The narrative does not judge Jeanne and gives no assurance at the end. Who it is for: viewers who like French classics and Jeanne Moreau. Who it is not for: the first half is slow, the surrounding characters are caricatures, and the romanticism can feel excessive now.