The Lovers

The Lovers (Les Amants, 1958) is Louis Malle's French drama you can watch online on iFILM. Jeanne Moreau plays a provincial wife for whom the grand house, the polished lover and the society parties have all blurred into one long stretch of boredom.

Jeanne Tournier has been married for years. A country estate, a wealthy husband, a sweet daughter, expensive clothes — and an emptiness nothing seems to fill. Driving home, her car breaks down, and a young archaeologist named Bernard gives her a lift. He's nothing like her set and makes no secret of how little he thinks of the life she leads. A single night undoes everything, and by morning Jeanne is ready to leave her husband, her child and the whole tidy arrangement behind.

Malle made only his second feature here at twenty-six, and Moreau came out of it the face of the French New Wave. Henri Decaë's camera holds that night in long, gliding takes set to Brahms. In the United States the film went all the way to the Supreme Court over one frank scene — the case where a justice famously said he knew obscenity "when I see it." A quiet, sensual piece for lovers of older European cinema. Stream The Lovers (1958) online on iFILM.