La lunga notte di Louise

An oddity in de Broca's oeuvre, a sombre film with little evident humour that is mostly a character study of an aging single woman, incarnated magisterially by Jeanne Moreau. As in « Mademoiselle » by Tony Richardson, her apparently retiring spinsterly personality in fact exerts power over those around her, but not over the fiercer power of her own emotions.

A teacher at a college in the Alpine town of Annecy, filmed in bleak midwinter rather than the gorgeous summer of Rohmer's « Le Genou de Claire », she takes in a homeless unemployed Italian boy. From sleeping demurely on her sofa while she mothers him, he progresses to her bed. The difficulties this relationship creates, as the lad steals and gets sacked from jobs, are eased by the robust support she gains from another single teacher who is also soloist in a choir. But both know that the wounded bird she has nurtured will need to fly away and that a void will be left in Louise's lonely life.

No action, no sex, just the subtle intricacies of two lives coming together and inevitably parting, all to Georges Delerue's always beautiful score that includes fine chunks of Gounod.