Plot

A well-bred, lovely, spiritual, sad young woman marries an attentive physician who loves her. She feels affection but no love. Soon after, without design, she falls in love with Pedro Abrunhosa, a poet and performance artist. He also loves her. She keeps her distance from him, confessing her love to a friend who is a nun and, later, to her husband. Hunger for her love and jealousy consume him; she attends him as he wastes away. With his death, she can marry and express her passion, but what she does and how she explains herself, particularly to her cloistered friend, is at the heart of the film. Glimpses of convent life and of Abrunhosa on stage give contrast and mute comment.—<jhailey@hotmail.com>

In Paris, nowadays (1999), a young and beautiful Mademoiselle Catherine de Chartres attends a piano recital and is courted by an aristocrat, Jacques de Clèves, a famous and wealthy doctor. Even though she knows she doesn't love him, she eventually accepts Jacques de Clèves marriage proposal, because of social and family pressures. One night, the couple attends a concert by the well-known Portuguese singer, Pedro Abrunhosa, and Madame de Clèves, falls in love with him. However, this passion leaves her divided and embittered by a strong sense of guilt, especially because she does not love her husband. A nun who was a childhood friend of Catherine de Chartres listens to her sorrows and doubts. After the death of her husband, Madame de Clèves becomes a missionary in Africa. The film is loosely based on the 1678 French novel The Princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette.The adaptation of the novel is about the frustrated love of Catherine of Chartres who, after a disappointment in love, decides to marry a very famous doctor - Jacques de Clèves - without feeling any love for him. As a result, she falls in love with a fashionable singer, Pedro Abrunhosa. Jacques de Clèves confesses to his wife that he suffers from a serious illness. This confession intensifies Catherine de Chartres' feelings of ambivalence and guilt. Catherine's mother is aware of her daughter's passion, and before her husband dies, tries to separate her from the singer, the man she is in love with. After her mother's death, she finds herself torn between her desire to be with the singer and her desire to be faithful to her husband. A religious friend, whom she confides in, tries to help her sort things out.