Albertine (Claudia Cardinale), irritated by her husband, travels from Bordeaux to Paris for a fresh start. Michèle Morgan as Cécile is effectively our narrator and prompts Albertine non-judgementally through her adventure.
The pretentious world of wealthy Parisian society, 'le Paris des snobs', is satirised. It's kind of shooting fish in a barrel and all talk for the first section of the film. A change of scene from a social ball in which people are standing around talking to an art exhibition in which people are standing around talking... isn't a change of scene. I should add to be fair that my French isn't so brilliant that I will have caught every piece of wit.
Albertine gives a chance to a succession of tedious men.
Richard (Darry Cowl, strangely uncredited) talks about nothing but cars. Jean-Claude Brialy does his thing as precocious novelist Didier. He is to give a self-effacing television interview about his misogenistic new book, which wins the 'Femina' prize. A bit of plot and movement only really kicks in when Lino Ventura as the overworking doctor comes into it and Albertine finds herself having to answer his telephone.
As Marie-Laure the society queen-pin, Danielle Darrieux reheats her dominating persona from Le Septième Ciel, but without the murders. Yes she hams it up, but my one laugh-out-loud of the film was when she rejected the bouillon, and she's funny towards the end. "You are the result of twenty years of sacrifices!" she says to her disappointing children. "Nestlé milk, an English nurse, skiing holidays..."
I liked Cardinale's performance, so natural that at times it is as if she is watching the film with us. Albertine is gorgeous and intelligent, knows her power, unapologetically tests out her freedom and deals with the varieties of maleness that she encounters. On the other hand, she is still seeking her independence by looking to be wooed by a new man. We are still in an age when a gifle, a man slapping a woman across the face, was seen as putting a woman in her place ('Couldn't have put it better', says Cécile).
The satire doesn't come from a particularly enlightened standpoint, it's essentially the establishment in the person of wise Cécile putting down the nouveaux-riches. The script grows on me a little, but these mores do date it. Maybe just watch it because you like the actors involved.
