Les Amants (aka The Lovers) (1958)

Living in the provinces, an upper class bourgeois wife (Jeanne Moreau) dissatisfied in her marriage keeps a polo playing lover (Jose Luis De Villaonga, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S) in Paris. A house party involving her lover, her husband (Alain Cuny), her best friend (Judith Magre) and a stranger (Jean Marc Bory) brings a shocking revelation to her. Based on the novel POINT DE LENDEMAIN by Dominique Vivant and directed by Louis Malle. This once controversial (in the U.S., its obscenity case went all the way to the Supreme Court) still retains its ability to hold one's attention although far from Malle's best work. At its best, there is the exquisite Jeanne Moreau (looking tres chic in her Chanel haute couture), one of the cinema's greatest actresses at its center. At its worst, it resembles those florid romance novels with purple prose done over with an artistic sheen: Moreau in a diaphanous negligee floating through the woods with her lover while Brahms plays oh so tastefully on the soundtrack. With Gaston Modot and Michele Girardon (HATARI).