Patrice Leconte's Le Parfum d'Yvonne | The Perfume of Yvonne (1994)

There are three main characters in Patrice Leconte's Le Parfum d'Yvonne, which is based on Patrick Modiano's novel Villa Triste: Count Victor Chmara (Hyppolyte Girardot), Yvonne Jacquet (Sandra Majani) and Doctor René Meinthe (Jean-Pierre Marielle). The story is told historically from Victor's point of view, with many long flashbacks to 1958, when he was some years younger and dodging conscription to the Algerian war by moving to an area around Lake Leman, living in hotels and boarding houses. He looks back to the time when his life was turned upside down by the lovely young budding actor Yvonne, when both of them were driven locally to various places by René, the ageing and openly homosexual man who is slightly mad, given to fits of rage in which he calls himself 'La Reine des Belges'.

Le Parfum d'Yvonne is a sensual, dreamy fantasy-cum-reality in which all is not as it seems: 'Victor', to start with, is not a count but a man living under an assumed identity; and as his love affair with Yvonne becomes more intense, his intention being to make his lover a star in the USA, she abruptly ends the relationship without a word. And the flamboyant René is not as happy as it may at first appear: Aznavour's 'Sa jeunesse' reminds him far too much of the little time he has to live, and angers him when he hears it sung.

Early in the film Yvonne (who has a Dalmatian dog) tells Victor that these dogs are prone to suicide. If this is true or not I'm unsure, although it's certainly true that about a quarter of Dalmatians suffer from an excess of uric acid, an active chemical in human depression. Patrice Leconte seems to be obsessed with suicide: not only did he direct the animated film Le Magasin des suicides, but suicide appears in several of his other films, such as Le Mari de la coiffeuse, Monsieur Hire and La Femme sur le pont. Le Parfum d'Yvonne ends dramatically in René deliberately driving through a fence, the car toppling down a cliff and bursting into flames.