Truffaut's second rendition of an H-P Roché novel — the first being Jules and Jim, the only other novel written by Roché — is more mature, controlled, detached. It flits across years and years (the time is the early 20th Century) in the lives of its characters — a prissy French intellectual and two English sisters — and it lights here and there on various turning points and climaxes, while it skips over most of the motivations in between. The result of this hop-and-skip method is a clear sense of life's unpredictable and unending vagaries. Truffaut repeatedly risks ridicule for his fragile, erratic characters, and his intended tone is often in doubt. But he proves himself a true connoisseur of eroticism, ranging from the scrupulously suppressed kind (a girl in a blindfold) to the extravagantly unleashed (the bloodstain on the bedclothes). With Jean-Pierre Leaud, Kiki Markham, and Stacey Tendeter. (1972) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.