22 February 2022

Robert Bresson's Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945)

Les Dames du bois de Boulogne is a modern update inspired by a part of Diderot's late eighteenth-century work Jacques le Fataliste et son maître, in which Hélène (Maria Casarès) fails to get revenge on her lover Jean (Paul Bernard) for no longer being interested in her. In Hélène's place will come cabaret dancer – a part-time prostitute – Agnès (Élina Labourdette).

Hélène starts her plan by paying off the debts of Agnès and her mother Madame D. (Lucienne Bogaert) and sets them up in an apartment in Port-Royal, then arranges a meeting in the Bois de Boulogne, at the side of the Grande Cascade. And Jean falls for Hélène's plan by falling for Agnès. But, on marrying Agnès, he doesn't flinch on being triumphantly told by Hélène that he's married a tramp. Times change.

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