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The titular address gives a view of the Panthéon, earlier the Eiffel Tower is glimpsed in the distance in a signature Jacques Becker shot, an elderly maid muttering about the juiciness of a pear while tidying up after the protagonists. The husband (Louis Jourdan) drives racing cars and sees a redhead on the side, the wife (Anne Vernon) moves out to a Latin Quarter boarding house once she finds out. Champagne and soft music fuel their last dinner, "trop triste," the following morning has the husband zigzagging in striped pajamas like a memory of The Palm Beach Story. Her modest new room provides an introduction to Bohemia, the aspiring songwriter next door (Daniel Gélin) helps make her bed and adds a chanson to the aural welter of strumming guitars and playing children. "Un p'tit coin d'parapluie, contre un coin d'Paradis..." It could be a lost La Cava film except it's Becker taking a light view of a serious situation, or rather offering a grave story consisting of gags. The Champs-Élysées fashion studio points up the kinship with Cukor's A Life of Her Own, the bisexual couturier (Jean Servais) ponders the heroine's application by asking her to draw a key, "a pretty one." (The after-hours tête-à-tête is a dance of control and suggestiveness augmented by the jealousy of a male designer.) The moody hepcat sees right through the bourgeois dame's chic pretense and loves her all the same, meanwhile the husband is still struggling to figure out why she left: "Because of the children." "You haven't got any." "That's the point!" Truffaut in Domicile conjugal helps himself to a grace note or two. With Micheline Dax, Michel Flamme, Jacques Morel, Marcelle Praince, Henri Belly, and Madame Paquerette. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |