Marie lives with Antoine, but while he is away she meets Paul, a filmmaker visiting from Canada. Paul is instantly smitten and wants her to marry him. She puts him off by saying that she and Antoine have decided to have a baby. When Antoine returns, he becomes vividly jealous of his girlfriend's chaste encounter, which provokes her into having an affair with Paul.
Acting
Gainsbourg's mercurial stillness — every silence weighs a ton.
Direction
Doillon's clinical observation of emotional combustion in real-time.
Director
Jacques Doillon
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Charlotte Gainsbourg was 21 and already a Gérard Award winner; this cemented her as the face of wounded French femininity for a generation.
Doillon shot largely in sequence with extensive improvisation, letting the actors discover the affair's inevitability in real-time — explains why the jealousy feels so authentically ugly.
FR
