La Tendre Ennemie [Tender Enemy] *** (1936, Simone Berriau, Catherine Fonteney, Laure Diana) – Classic Movie Review 7502

Co-writer/ producer/ director Max Ophüls’s diverting 1936 French film La Tendre Ennemie (Tender Enemy) tells the charming tale about three dead men, ghosts who encounter each other again in the afterlife and end up dissecting their relationship with the one woman, Annette Dupont (Simone Berriau),  l’ennemie, the Tender Enemy who had made their lives difficult.

One of the ghosts is Dupont (Georges Vitray) who attends an engagement party, unseen by the other guests, as the father of the bride-to-be, Line (Jacqueline Daix), about to marry Le Fiancé (Maurice Devienne). Dupont looks back on his marriage to Line’s mother, his always unhappy wife Annette. But it turns out that the real Tender Enemy was Annette’s mother, La Mère (Catherine Fonteney).

Based on the play L’Ennemie by André-Paul Antoine, Tendre Ennemie may not be quite one of Max Ophüls’s very best, but it is certainly always civilised, entertaining and enjoyably humorous, and nicely performed too.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7502

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