Impossible Object

Story of a Love Story (France)

Franco-London/Euro International. Director John Frankenheimer; Screenplay Nicolas Mosley; Camera Claude Renoir; Editor Albert Jurgenson; Music Michel Legrand; Art Director Alexandre Trauner

Alan Bates
Dominique Sanda
Evans Evans
Lea Massari
Michel Auclair
Paul Crauchet

John Frankenheimer spent over a year in Paris and then made this film for a local company, albeit mainly in English with passages between French people in French. It is a many-pronged affair in a tale of a writer whose inventions and real life may not always be extricable. It mixes romantic drama, situation comedy and insights into Americans or British abroad.

Alan Bates is a writer, living in a country home in France, outside Paris, with three sons and an American wife. He meets brooding but delicately sensual Dominique Sanda, who is married, in a museum and love blossoms. Film flits lightly over the affair, the writer's embroidery on it and sideline events that reflect on it until sudden swerve to tragedy.

Though pic segues from fantasy to implied realism, pic has an airy grace, fine playing down the line.

(Color) Extract of a review from 1973. Running time: 110 MIN.

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