Sunday, June 21, 2009
ABANDONED
Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was Louis Malle's
Les Avent / The Lovers (1958)with Jeanne Moreau and Jean-Marc Bory.
The story is a rather simple one. Very french.
A young woman is bored with her marriage and unsatisfied with her lover and so, when a new boy shows up, she is ready to go.
It is not like that of course. Moreau turns in a wonderfully credible performance as the wife who is truly conflicted about the life that she has chosen. When her car breaks down and she is given a lift by a handsome archeologist she resists the obvious and then wham, they connect.
It is beautifully done and even anti-romantics will like it very much. Even cheer.
This film is unintentionally revolutionary in that it broke many obscenity censorship rules in America and went all the way to the Supremes. And won.
It is obscene by 50's standards. Today it would play as rather pedestrian and a bit closeted.
There are no female nipples, no asses, and no real nudity although there is a bath together but the water obscures the detail.
My theory is that the problem with the film, for the blue noses, is that the sex that is shown is mostly oral (off camera) and the rapture is all on the part of Moreau, the woman. She has a glorious orgasm.
The male, Bory, puts the focus on the woman's pleasure. Radical. In the old days, the guy would strut and the woman would grin and bear it.
This new take on sex would not go down well, so to speak, in Ohio where a Cleveland theater owner was jailed for showing it.
All that aside, it is a beatiful film with a lot of show, don't tell moments that read beautifully. The lovers are quite handsome and totally appealing. The husband and other suitor are not made to be jerks. They just don't fit in, quite. I could phrase that another way I suppose.
I really liked this movie and would not mind seeing it again at all. I think that I would notice even more Malle moments. It is great to watch.
A 4 out of Netflix5.
Labels: best films
