L’homme qui aimait les femmes [The Man Who Loved Women] **** (1977, Charles Denner, Brigitte Fossey, Leslie Caron, Nelly Borgeaud, Nathalie Baye) – Classic Movie Review 3017

Director François Truffaut’s incisive and entertaining 1977 romantic comedy L’homme qui aimait les femmes [The Man Who Loved Women] boasts a subtle and touching central performance by Charles Denner as Bertrand Morane, the obsessed Frenchman who seems to fall for every woman he meets. It does not sound very charming, but he is a charming sex addict.

Some people find Truffaut’s hero an objectionable sexist who objectifies women. Perhaps this is so, but that is not really the point. The point is that he loves women and that he does not use or exploit them. In fact he is so obsessed by them that it leads to the accident that causes his death. All the women who loved 40-year-old engineer Bertrand Morane attend his funeral and in flashbacks the stories of his love affairs are told by himself while writing an autobiographical novel.

The film’s force comes from its passion and, if the characters seem superficial, it is not a film about character. After all, it is seen in flashback from Denner’s viewpoint, and he hardly knows anything at all about these women — only that he loves their physicality, and that somehow they love him back for it.

With no glow of nostalgia, just Truffaut’s usual despair about the inevitability of true love’s failure, Truffaut’s movie is a provocative and brave one that boldly goes where few others have been. As so many of Truffaut’s films are semi-autobiographical, are we supposed to imagine that The Man Who Loved Women is Truffaut?

It may have a male star but it also provides good work for actresses Brigitte Fossey, Leslie Caron, Nelly Borgeaud, Nathalie Baye, Geneviève Fontanel, Sabine Glaser and Valérie Bonnier.

L’homme qui aimait les femmes was remade as The Man Who Loved Women by Blake Edwards in 1983, with Burt Reynolds. This time the story is told by the hero’s therapist (Julie Andrews).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3017

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