The Lovers

The love scene in The Lovers is, according to publicity, the longest in screen history. It is also, very likely, the most amusing. After bringing together under one roof, husband and wife, lover and stranger, after lingering over dinner, then coffee, and then brandy, the movie finally settles down to business.

The wife, having avoided both her husband's and her lover's bed, steps outside to survey the night. She is confronted, of course, by the stranger, and as the narrator points out, "one small glance and love is born." The two express this new found emotion rather strangely and athletically. The heroine, clad in filmy white, and her new love, more suitably dressed for the long hike ahead of them, set out over hill and dale, under fences, over bridges, through meadows, until finally, faint from fatigue, they float gently downstream in a skiff. Having recovered strength, the two hike back to the house, where unencumbered by clothes, they hop happily into the tub. Luck being with the lovers, neither the husband nor the ex-lover hear all the splashing and the two spend what is left of the night together. Morning finds the tired but happy couple stealing away from the house together, observed in their joy by a lone white work-horse, who is obviously a disguised observer from McCall's.

The plot, for those who are interested, concerns a simple, but unhappy wife, married to a simple, but unappreciative husband who is a newspaper editor in Dijon. She deserts him first for Paris, then for a lover, and finally for her true love. The moral of all this seems to be that love's laurels go to the physically fit.

Although the plot is wearing, the acting is not. With one possible exception, the cast makes the most of the script. The wife, Jeanne Moreau, considering her scanty dialogue, performs remarkably well. Her lover, Jean-Marc Bory, though hampered by the false assumption that he is Marlon Brando, turns in a credible performance, and the heroine's girl friend, played by Judith Magre, is a brilliant caricature of the fashionable Parisienne.

Andre Villard's camera direction is uniformly acceptable and occasionally outstanding, as is the sound-track that Brahms unwittingly supplied. And, to make up for the puerility of the love scene, there are several short scenes of rare film sophistication. A tense evening meal combines brilliant writing, direction, and camera work to acid, ironic effect. However, from bedtime on, the movie bogs down.