It begins with lines written by Jean Cocteau ,warning us against the selfish intellectuals,who leave the true life out.
The movie is a long flashback ,the scene of Morill leaving his hosts' desirable mansion is filmed twice,from the outside ,then from the inside.In between the hero remembers....he was a playwright's and his wife's guest ;it takes the form of a very long interview with a literary critic who arrives when the tragedy happens.....
The playing is extremely sophisticated ,and the whole movie could be performed on stage .In its form,it shows the influence of the notorious French Nouvelle Vague and there are static shots aplenty.
Directing is icily impersonal and devoid of real emotion ;who cares for this love triangle?
The playwright,who has no son,writes a drama in which the father kills his son ultimately;his young guest suggest he begin his drama with the crime and he study his wife's reactions and how he can cope with it.Morill could be his son:not only his host wants to mold him ,but he also uses him as a literary "guineapig" ,the main character of his new work;they hint ,in the first part ,at the realistic side of a literary work ;but a book remains a book,and should not be a matter of life ;living in a intellectual fantasy is a blind alley . "Writing can be a hell of a sickness" says Morill to a desperate intellectual full of self-importance whose life is finally an hypocrite imitation (his wife uses this epithet)and who threw away the most precious things .
You have been warned:this is uncompromisingly highbrow stuff,sometimes heady,sometimes a headache.