Synopsis
THIS WAS HER MOMENT! ...and nothing else mattered!
A shallow, provincial wife finds her relationship with her preoccupied husband strained by romantic notions of love, leading her further towards Paris and the country wilderness.
1958 ‘Les Amants’ Directed by Louis Malle
A shallow, provincial wife finds her relationship with her preoccupied husband strained by romantic notions of love, leading her further towards Paris and the country wilderness.
Οι Εραστές, 연인들, Die Liebenden, Elskerne, 情人们, Los amantes, Les amants - Gli amanti, הנאהבים, Οι Ερασταί, A szeretők, De älskande, 恋人たち, Os Amantes, Коханці, Meilužiai, Любовники, Kochankowie
CRITERION CHALLENGE 2021: 1950s
Progress: 15/52
"The tragedy Jeanne thought she was in had become a farce."
Equal parts scathing social satire and paean to sensualism, Louis Malle's elegant sophomore feature The Lovers (Les amants) charts the scandalous emancipation of young provincial housewife Jeanne Tournier (Jeanne Moreau). With dialogue assistance from novelist Louise de Vilmorin (who wrote the source novel for Max Ophüls' masterly The Earrings of Madame de…), Malle effected a modern overhaul of Vivant Denon's Point of No Return, an obscure conte libertin dating to the eighteenth century.
Jeanne's saga is narrated in Moreau's voice but from a detached, third-person perspective as though looking back on the story being depicted. The action begins at a polo match…
Tenderness in trial and it's internal ambivalence. A heart bereft of compassion, evisecerated of adoration and fragmented into despair. Devotion upon a verisimilitude, dwelling from empty gaze to gaze, seeking love's purity and requiting a compounded nothingness. We cross our paths, clandestine of affection in passing look. A sensual gesture for lust in euphoria, I look to your glowing eyes under gleaming nocturnal light and see comfort, a comfort for perennial time.
"Can't you decide to be happy for once? What more do you need?"
For those of us who have spent enough years absorbing the Law & Order franchise into our bloodstreams, we all probably remember Fred Dalton Thompson or Steven Hill citing Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous line from a ruling about obscenity: "I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." What may not be as easily recalled about Jacobellis v. Ohio, however, is that it concerned a Cleveland Heights, Ohio movie theater manager's ability to show Louis Malle's The Lovers at his establishment in 1964, a right that was indeed upheld when Stewart and his brethren agreed that the…
From IMDB's Trivia Section:
"After screening this film, Nico Jacobellis, manager of the Heights Art Theater in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, was charged with and convicted of possessing and exhibiting an obscene film. He appealed all the way to the US Supreme Court, which overturned the convictions, ruling that the film was not obscene. In a concurring opinion, Justice Potter Stewart made his famous pronouncement concerning what was pornography: "I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 197 (1964) (Stewart, J., concurring)."
When I saw Godard's A Married Woman (1964), I thought it was the first film to portray the intimacy of an affair from…
sometimes jeanne moreau gets bored and decides to be extremely messy and you know what, that is VALID!!!! she did nothing wrong!!!!! this film is so sexy!!!!!
Jeanne Moreau has such a beguiling face. At rest she is proud and defiant, maybe a little sad, even verging on severe. But when she smiles she beams, lighting up with an inner beauty that is radiant and enchanting. Louis Malle’s Les Amants makes the most of these characteristics in telling a tale of repressed love that is released during a magical night of passion.
She plays Jeanne, the young provincial wife of a wealthy, cigar-puffing patrician. She’s his trophy, and his interest in her flips between being patronising and suspicious. Typically he is both demanding and dismissive, such that when she claims not to be sad, his attitude is “why not?”. Needless to say, Jeanne is frustrated and seeks…
Tolstoy creates a famous inflection point when Anna is being met by Karenin on the train platform and she sees his ears as ridiculous. This triggers a consciousness of her dissatisfaction with him and their mutual hypocrisy and somehow frees herself to love Vronsky.
I think there’s a similar purgative moment in The Lovers when Jeanne and Bernard drive up to her house and she falls into laughter seeing her husband as a brown bear and her lover as his victim. We (and maybe Jeanne) don’t realize it yet, but she’s realized she’s through with both of them and free for something new.
The coming romantic twist blindsided me like the best mystery thrillers. What follows, the 30 minute day-for-night…
I am tickled fucking pink imagining a gaggle of Supreme Court justices watching this artsy French New Wave film to determine if it's obscene pornography
Like a slow burn thriller it shows the disintegration of bourgeoisie lovers culminating in one of the most beautiful final 30 minutes of passion. I have never seen love making so poignant,beautiful and so tender.Hard to imagine Louis Malle was just 25 when he made this film.Take a bow!