I'll start by saying this is a gorgeous film, with many beautiful scenes and fantastic 'New Wave' direction from Louis Malle. Jeanne Moreau plays a married woman with a disinterested husband (Alain Cuny), and, bored after 8 years of marriage, pursues an affair with a polo player (José Luis de Vilallonga). She does it under the guise of visiting her friend (Judith Magre) in Paris. This get a little ticklish when her husband starts to tire of the charade, and demands that she invite the two of them to dinner at their mansion in Dijon. The romantic tension in the film is palpable, and it's chic and stylish in its exploration of the age old theme of human relationships. There is an additional character who comes on the scene of Moreau's car breakdown (Jean-Marc Bory) who provides the film a voice for criticism about French society and the bourgeois.There is an extraordinary change of pace in what happens that night, but I won't spoil it, and it's best to not know what's coming when seeing this film for the first time. I'll just say that it enters a bit of a dreamlike and surreal haze, but as anyone who has ever been passionately in love will attest, that haze is quite realistic. In one highly charged scene, Moreau's lover goes down on her, which is bit shocking for 1958, a time when Hollywood by contrast was mired in the Hays Code and had married couples sleeping in separate beds. And yet it's tastefully and beautifully done, which is perhaps that's why Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart so famously said of this film that it was not pornography, because "I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." Indeed.There is a lot to love here. Moreau is wonderful, so beautiful and conveying so much emotion with her eyes. The acting is strong throughout, and the film still feels like a 'fresh voice' almost 60 years later. It's very romantic and yet honest at the same time, which is not easy. Great film.

In this, director Louis Malle's second film, which for awhile seems like it will be another high society soap opera, a seemingly arbitrary plot detour occurs that places the beautiful Jeanne Moreau in a situation all the less convenient and all the more frustrating because of how accustomed she has become to her privilege. Consequently, Moreau is less like a Sex and the City character and more of a realization that a social ladder does not leave problems below it. They follow you from decision to decision to decision. And the further up it she climbs, the less considerate her decisions seem to be of the world outside of herself.As a 25-year-old French director at the dawn of the New Wave, he was not alone in satirizing and criticizing the bourgeoisie. Ironically, being younger than fellow Nouveau filmmakers Godard and Truffaut, as well as having been born into a wealthy industrialist family, had no hand in blinding him by way of his privileged ego. Watching this biting romantic drama about adultery and the reality and illusion of rediscovering love, I see that Malle understood the upper-class freedom of never having to worry about tomorrow, and not only does he characterize it with an almost humorously frustrating edge, he wisely satirizes love at first sight. The movie was made in 1958, but Malle's style has yet to garner an expiration date. There are no outdated lap dissolves or screen wipes or quick fade-outs. The controversy at the time surrounding this film's alleged obscenity had a rebounding effect on the flimsy subjectivity of society's accusations. He was simply being honest, which he is in the aforementioned portrayals beyond the simple night of passionate love Moreau has with her lover. Instead of a coy imitation of a spectator blushing and looking away, as many other films did and still do when the camera moves to the window or the ceiling, Malle fixates on her ecstasy. Even now, rarely do we see a close shot of a woman's sexual pleasure. A bit like Woody Allen would come to do in a few decades, Malle tends to saturate his soundtracks with a single composer. Here, it is Johannes Brahms, whose music is a brilliantly and acutely intuitive choice for the film since, much like the characters, he has a classical sense of form and order yet he's bold in his exploration of harmony and rhythm.

This represents yet another nail in the coffin of the new wavelet; released in 1958 it features everything the spoiled brats were rebelling against and as if that weren't enough it was shot by Henri Decae, who they liked to claim as their own, proving here that at heart he was light years away from their hand-held arrogance. Nice, too, to see Alain Cuny who seemed to disappear - at least from International screens - after Les Visiteurs du soir as the boring (to his wife) semi aristocrat owner of both a newspaper and a château, neither of which does much to scratch the itch afflicting his wife, Jeanne Moreau, which even the attentions of a polo-playing lover cannot assuage. There's some nice observations of the Old-Money set in their natural habitat, ravishing black and white photography and a set piece in a nocturnal wood that is the very antithesis of new wavelet novelty. It was the second time hand-running that Moreau had played an adulterous wife for Malle and if anything she was better this time around. Now it's available in a boxed set of Malle it may attract the attention it deserves.

The legendary French actress Jeanne Moreau shows why even at this early stage of her career she was destined to become one of the greats (along with tyro-director Louis Malle).Perfect film for chickflickers as the plot line revolves around a married woman who can't decide between her loveless marriage, her playboy lover, or perhaps the next stranger she meets.Still stands up after all these years and yes it's been re-struck in its original 35mm widescreen form (in gorgeous BLACK & WHITE, too)!NOTE: If you live in NYC there is a full Louis Malle retrospective going on thru July 19, 2005 and this film is being screened today, tomorrow, and June 29 with a gorgeously restored black and white print at the Walter Reade theater.