Metrograph

The third entry in Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales series, in which cinematographer Néstor Almendros takes magnificent advantage of the glorious natural light of the French Riviera, is a deceptively lovely film about less-than-lovely behavior, an ironic study of male acquisitiveness and priggish high-handedness in which two friends, a fastidious painter, Daniel (Pommereulle), and a dilettante art dealer, Adrien (Patrick Bauchau), find themselves sharing a summer house near Saint-Tropez with a third occupant, a young woman named Haydée Politoff, who winds up in the middle of their psychological gamesmanship. Written in collaboration with its three leads, this gold-hued depiction of moral rot may be the film in which Rohmer’s mature style first appears fully formed.

Distributor: Janus Films