User reviews

This is the story of Jeanne Tournier, a bored upper class woman who tries to escape her situation through romantic love. While it would be unfair to expect the depth of character development in this movie to match that in the similarly plotted novels "Madame Bovary" or "Lady Chatterley's Lover," this presentation seems particularly thin.

Some half century on this movie has lost some of its punch. Apparently it was considered to be sexually avant-garde at the time of its release, but it would probably get a PG-13 rating now.

There are things that make this worth seeing. As Jeanne Tournier, Jeanne Moreau does turn up the heat and her fans will want to see this. There is some nice black and white camera work. There are a lot of night scenes (filmed day for night, as Malle comments on the DVD extras) that are atmospheric and augment the intimate scenes.

While the erotic scenes might not jar, a shocking thing even for contemporary audiences is the fact that Jeanne would take off and leave her child behind. Also Jeanne engages in two adulterous affairs without remorse--that would have had 1950s audiences talking, and some contemporary audiences as well.

Thinking about the future of the renegade couple, I think it will not take Jeanne and her lover long to realize that she is taking her boredom with her.

The bored and empty upper-class Jeanne Tournier (Jeanne Moreau) lives in a manor with many servants in the countryside of Dijon with her husband Henri Tournier (Alain Cuny) and their daughter Catherine. Henri is the editor of The Burgundy Monitor and has been married to Jeanne for eight years, but he does not give much attention to his wife. Jeanne travels frequently to the house of her childhood friend Maggy Thiebaut-Leroy (Judith Magre) in Paris to meet her lover, the famous polo player Raoul Flores (José Villalonga).

One day, Henri suspects of the frequent trips of Jeanne to Paris and invites Maggy and Raoul Flores to have dinner and spend the weekend in his mansion. While driving back home from Paris, Jeanne car breaks down and the archaeologist Bernard Dubois-Lambert (Jean-Marc Bory) that is going to Montbard to visit a professor, gives a ride to Jeanne. Henri invites Bernard to stay with them and during the night, he has a love affair with Jeanne. On the next morning, Jeanne decides to go away from Henri, Catherine and Raoul with her new lover.

"Les Amants" is the second film of Louis Malle and I can imagine the impact of this amoral story in 1958, with a mother leaving her daughter to seek true love with her younger lover. The muse of many filmmakers Jeanne Moreau is gorgeous and sensual in the role of a woman ahead her time needy for love and happiness. The cinematography in black and white is wonderful and the open conclusion fits perfectly to this sensual film. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Os Amantes" ("The Lovers")

In 1959 this film was considered as something close to porno, but this is far enough from the reality. Jeanne Moreau was young, nice and attractive. She was the star of this film, which goes slowly as usual in French cinema's style. When you see this type of film you must become a psychologist to penetrate inside the brains of each hero and make some conclusions. Accordingly I concluded that life is not a straight line, suddenly something may happen in our lives that deviate completely this straight line. Formal ethics accepted by the society goes sometimes to extremes that does not enable the persons to behave and feel happy. What's wrong when the current life is disrupted to start a new one? At this point I advise you to see this old, and black and white film, which may compel you to think and to conclude something new, probably different to what I am saying here.

You've got it all, excepting a sad marriage, hubby's not interested, in your wagon or carriage, so you spend the weeks in Paris, watching polo has its merits, but at the weekend you return, to the disparage. Circumstances mean acquaintances will visit, a bit closer than just friends is Raoul Flores, but a breakdown on the way, causes detour and delay, and an extra guest now joins the home foray.

Jeanne Moreau, one of the most eye-catching actors of her day plays Jeanne Tournier, a woman oozing dissatisfaction with her home life in rural Dijon, wants to be dazzled by the sights and sounds of Paris, but has her attentions distracted quite unexpectedly when she is forced to arrange a weekend soirée in the marital mansion.

Fanciful stuff, and a little bit daft.

As a twenty-something, I saw this film with my boyfriend of the time, and as soon as it was over, we rushed home to do it ourselves. In the early-to-mid sixties, "Les Amants" was eroticism that was certainly explicit--albeit tastefully explicit, to our naive eyes. Made when Malle was twenty-five, with the young Jeanne Moreau, to the romantic Sextette that Brahams wrote when he was 27, this was the perfect sexy romance for its time and place.

I just saw it again, now watching as a sixty-something in an age in which "Les Amants" would probably get an R rating--and a tame one. I'm jaded too. It's hard to feel much sympathy for a desperate housewife of the upper middle class as she battles ennui. But the love sequence is still a knockout. You can't stop to think about it as the lovers, who as yet barely know each other except for their terrific physical attraction, go from garden-to-boat- to bedroom; it's still erotic in its implication. the garden is too lovely to be true, the boat is white and clean, and Moreau wears her pearl necklace throughout, but the message of a woman who has only known pedestrian sex being introduced for the first time to the Real Thing rang a bell with me (I had a similar experience, minus the garden, the pearls and the boat). I sat there bawling my head off-- with nostalgia this time for an unrecoverable experience-- through the whole sequence.

But the ending also rings true. What do you do when you come up for air?

From one of the interviews on the CD, I learned that the plot was based on an 18th century story, and I can readily see that, just as could see the fin-de-siècle Viennese origin of Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut." In neither case does the contemporary updating of the tales make them any less effective.

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 is my first Louis Malle film and I found myself really quite disappointed. One of the other posters says that the theme is about freedom and uncertainty. I would agree with this, but to be blunt a better way to learn about the subject would be to listen to the Brahms' String Sextets without the film.

Jeanne Moreau has been described in this movie as inscrutable, I'd agree with that, in this film we find out absolutely nothing of interest about her character, and I'm left perplexed as to the attraction Bernard had for her (purely libidinous?). The morality of the film is very confusing, certainly we can applaud Jeanne's existential urge to escape from her stifling fling, her marriage, and her Parisienne lifestyle, but the fact that she leaves her daughter behind is execrable. The woodland scenes are intriguing but a bit too contrived. If you want to see films about relationships I would suggest most of the oeuvre of Ingmar Bergman, which is far superior.

All in all a rather insipid, though beautiful, mess. Deserves 7 out of 10 because it is provocative and like all good art, subversive.

I know it's not fair to criticize a film because of its basic milieu. Jeanne Moreau is a rich woman who has probably married for money. Her husband is a clueless bore who runs a newspaper. They are extremely rich, with cooks and housemaids, and lots of time to get in trouble. He doesn't seem to have much affection for her (although she is a knockout) and encourages her to go to Paris and hang around with her equally useless friend. There she meets a polo player and he offers her some adventure, though when push comes to shove, he's not much different than her husband. The hard thing for me is that I couldn't care less what happens to her. She has pretty much all she wants and, I believe, a dolt of husband who must know she is having contact with men on the make. Things change when, after her car breaks down, a professor rescues her and then accompanies her back to her home. All participants in the drama are there: the husband, the polo player, and the vapid friend. Because this new guy is aggressive and not willing to cotton to her spoiled brat being, she finds him irresistible. LIke a dog on the prowl, he quickly seduces her and within one night, they are talking about running off together. Moreau is beautiful. That's about it. There is a very sexy scene for its time. The movie, for me, is utterly lacking in any semblance of real interaction. How can these people co-exist? Visually, it is quite well done and Louis Malle is a great director, but... For a moment, I hearkened back to the final scene in "The Graduate" as Katherine Ross and Dustin Hoffmann sit in the back of the bus, wondering what the future will bring.

Don't understand the message behind this film and it is unfocused.

I rate this film a 7 because of the romantic "sex scene" that lasts for 12 to 17 minutes before the close of the film. When art house films these days offer up non-simulated sex, The Lovers reminds us that lots of foreplay and showing only one exposed breast is enough to thrill.

That being said, it's actually a tale about what some psychologists refer to as the romantic high. When we meet someone new, the intimacy thrill can last anywhere from a few days to a few years; and then we're met with the task of living a mundane life with the same mundane partner.

Only the viewer can decide the female lead's ultimate fate. And that's what makes this film exciting, at least to me. Have you ever known adultery to never cause anyone any pain?

Paris in the 1950s. Film opens with Jeanne & Maggy, two glamorous high society aristocrats, watching a polo game, cheering the star player, the equally glamorous society page poster man Raoul Flores. Later, cozy snuggling between Raoul and Jeanne who, we learn when she goes home, is married to another man -- a prominent newspaper publisher, Henri. Over dinner, we observe quickly that Jeanne and Henri's marriage has been on deep freeze for sometime inside that capacious, ornately furnished countryside mansion. Henri, more or less convinced of Jeanne's affair with Raoul, insisted on having Jeanne invite Maggy and the polo player for the weekend. On her way back from Paris that weekend Jeanne's sports car breaks down. She's given a ride by archaeologist Bernard, definitely proletariat, definitely more comfortable studying rocks from diggings than at the polo field. Henri invites Bernard to stay for the weekend with Raoul and Maggy. At dinner Bernard shown to be an obvious outsider of this group. After everyone goes to bed, Jeanne wanders out into the night in her white, diaphanous nightgown, starting the forty-minute final sequence, the heart of the movie. This is the mildly sensuous moonlit epiphany for Jeanne that true love still can happen. (This sequence was deemed "shockingly erotic" in 1958 when the movie was released, becoming the main reason for calls for censorship, if not outright banning, in many countries). In a long sequence of lyrical black and white, day-for-night shots of shadows in the moonlight, a long walk on a vast field of shrubs and flowers, delicate embraces on a cozy boat floating unaided on a stream, Jeanne falls for Bernard's non-aristocratic, nonhigh-society, proletariat charms. Maybe it is the moonlight, or Bernard's open collar, working-archaeologist shirt, or his 2-cylinder mini-car, or the portentous bat that flew into the room when they were dining, but at the break of dawn, Jeanne decides to leave everything, including her sleeping daughter (another reason which shocked the critics and the Catholic church into condemning this movie) and drive away with Bernard into a new day aborning. (As far as I can remember this is the first movie I know where the central characters, at the fade-out, ride into the sunrise instead of into the sunset. One extra point for the then 25-year old Louis Malle). This movie has acquired its "classic status" for several reasons: It was a notable (and controversial!) work from a young director who was just starting to get noticed (Malle's fifth movie, his second for 1958). It portrayed succinctly the phoniness of the affluent as it showed a portrait of a woman confined within the rituals of her social status and then acting on her sudden feeling to get out. It presented a sex scene considered bold and shocking at that time (Jeanne's orgasm shown only through a close-up of her trembling hand is I think a clever idea from Malle). And it has Jeanne Moreau. (Although for me, anything with Jeanne Moreau is automatically on my personal "classic" list). Even by today's standards I think this is a very well-made movie if only for the subtlety with which Malle presented how these characters show the spectrum of their raw feelings. Moreau is "on every frame" (Malle's words from a 1994 interview) and perfectly so. She shows the build-up in Jeanne's simmering feelings so flawlessly, we actually feel the tension of when it's going to explode. Magre is pure delight as the fully-enjoy-the-moment Maggy. De Villalonga captures perfectly the unctuous charms of someone who's enraptured with his own image, endlessly watching and listening to himself in his own head. Cuny is admirably subtle in showing Henri as someone who has really stopped caring a long time ago, just enjoying watching these people make fools of themselves, eventually to choke on their own flirtations. Note his stiff indifference watching Bernard drive away with Jeanne. In the Moreau performances I've seen, I think this is one of her finest. In her every movie, the main tension is her eyes -- no one really knows what's going on behind that hypnotic stare. Love, passion, hatred, murder, tenderness, bewilderment? We always have to wait for the end of the movie. Some clever prefiguring clues Malle gives us: The bat flying in during their dinner causing a brief consternation -- their fortress has been breached, their aristocracy is not invulnerable anymore. Bernard's mini-car, slow but unstoppable in the highway -- stability, simple and quiet persistence. Bernard freeing the fishes from Henri's traps -- obviously about Jeanne. Excellent, luminous restoration from Criterion of this stunningly photographed black and white film by Henri Decae. Extras include two interviews from Malle and one from Jeanne Moreau. ##

That this film was considered ' obscene ' in some quarters says a lot about mankind's perennial attitude towards sexuality and any true depiction of it. It was not obscene then, and it is not obscene now. The situation of Jeanne Moreau's character Jeanne ( I like to think she was delighted in using her name in the film ) is the real problem area for some. She rejects convention, and even the facade of convention she had adopted for herself; snobbery, and seeking a false sexual freedom, while still returning to her caged life in provincial Dijon. She rejects it for a man she meets when her car breaks down, and she is in a hurry to go to a weekend party in her boorish husband's house. During the night when this man stays over her life changes by a single look in which she recognises a true relationship, and what followed worried the censors everywhere. I will not give away more of the fragile plot ( it really does not have one other than throwing cold water over societies conventions ) out of respect for those who have not seen it or ignored it. It is amazing to see here that it has only had 38 reviews, a damning indictment of how many reviews there are for cinematic trivia. The acting is flawless. The photography is flawless, and yet it is still a film that a lot avoid. I will single out Judith Magre, a great actress who is playing Jeanne's best society friend, and Jean-Marc Bory as the man who changes her life. I have seen it so many times in my life that I cannot count the number, and it as fine as cinema can get. Quite simply it tells us to grow up, which most films do not, and that is a challenge only a few can take on, and also that sex can be the greatest experience of intensity in its opposition to death.

I mostly enjoyed this film a lot. Certainly it's camera movement and use of deep focus is exemplary. Interestingly, it is only the focal point of the narrative that I found disappointing and over-played. The use of Brahms here strikes me as heavy handed as the use of Satie in Malle's soon-following The Fire Within seemed natural and complimentary. Most scenes struck me as subtly satiric, and I wondered if it wasn't something of an inspiration for The Graduate.

I was never a Jeanne Moreau fan before this film. This is one of her best performances. She plays the bored wife looking for love with dignity, honesty and passion. The music by Brahms during the evening love scenes adds additional emotion to this film. I found the story line simple, yet compelling and refreshing.

Guess this film won't be shown much on Mothers Day, huh? Even by the rather flexible Gallic standards of familial responsibility that's a pretty darn cold and rapid abandonment of a child by its parent. Or did you forget that Jeanne Moreau's adulteress had a daughter, like the vast majority of my fellow IMDB reviewers appeared to do or, for that matter, director Louis Malle did since the kid is rather precipitately dropped from the film after her initial appearance 5 min in? I imagine Malle felt the kid's presence would muddy the poetry, love and sex that is obviously of much more importance to him than stodgy ol parenthood. Vive le difference!