Writer/director Jacques Deray, little seen Stateside (this, BORSALINO/’70, anything else?), known for slick crime flicks, must have been jonesing for art house caché when he went all Michelangelo Antonioni on this one-off nihilistic tease of a thriller. Even getting Alain Delon (real deal Antonioni from L’ECLISSE/’62) to star with real-life ex Romy Schneider as house-sitting lovers whose delicately balanced carefree existence is shattered when longtime bosom-buddy Maurice Ronet stops by and becomes the hedonist who came to dinner, along with his recently found late-teen daughter. That’s Mod-Brit icon Jane Birkin, who proves a bosom-buddy of a different sort. What could go wrong? But if Antonioni’s modus operandi turned ‘No Man is an Island’ on its head into All Men are Islands (and just might vanish on one), Deray finds little more than gracefully proportioned volume in couture bathing suits to hang a tale on. Unquestionably yummy to look at in restored EastmanColor, but sporting borrowed style, philosophies and general ennui. Not commentary on man’s vanishing point, but merely fashionable appliqué. Deray, lost in his own artsy contrivance, eventually copitulating to wan police procedural in a post-murder third act, played in slow motion. It feels closer to Claude Lelouch’s A MAN AND A WOMAN/’66* than anything by Antonioni.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Though on record as disliking this film, Luca Guadagnino’s remake, A BIGGER SPLASH/’15, beefs up backstories, but largely keeps story beats. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/10/a-bigger-splash-2015.html
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Unlike Deray, breaking into the art house market by suppressing his genre instincts, Jean-Pierre Melville digs deeper into genre to refine his rep, also with Alain Delon on board in LE SAMOURAÏ/’67. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/11/le-samourai-1967.html
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *With the Michel Legrand soundtrack (and disconcertingly flat vocals by Ruth Price) to prove it.
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