The Lovers, 1958 - A Film Review

Yesterday I enjoyed watching a Netflix rental, the 1958 film "The Lovers" (Les Amants)". My review:
French language film about love and loneliness, expertly directed by Louis Malle. Here's a short summary of the plot: Jeanne (played by Jeanne Moreau) lives in a very lovely house in the French wine country outside Dijon - she has a young daughter, loyal servants, and a well-to-do husband of eight years, a newspaper publisher who is way more interested in his job and listening to Brahms records than being with his wife. Lonely and bored, Jeanne spends lots of weekends in Paris with her best gal pal Maggy - and those weekends get to be more and more frequent as beautiful Jeanne has fallen for a magnificently tall, dark, and handsome (Maggy knows 30 women who would do anything to have him) polo player who is madly in love with Jeanne. The husband begins to get jealous and oddly insists she cut her latest trip to Paris short and invite Maggy and the polo player to come back and stay with them for a few days. But when Jeanne's car breaks down on the way back home, she gets a ride with an attractive male stranger who is then asked by the hubby to join the group for dinner and stay overnight. Now we've got dinner and conversation round the table with hubby, wife, Maggy, the polo player, and the stranger and - Possible SPOILER - the whole situation becomes a sort of farce in Jeanne's eyes - until a night of passion leads to a complete life change (and I won't go into the details of this as it's too much of a SPOILER).
This film is very passionate, with almost a third of the film devoted to the love scenes between Jeanne and her lover, with an amount of in bed (and bath and boat) love-making and a touch of nudity that, though seemingly tame now, is surprising for a film made in the fifties. The film is interestingly photographed in black-and-white, and the plot, though slow moving, completely held me captivated - I really became interested in this woman's story. Jeanne's voice is sometimes heard as voice-over narration, telling her thoughts in third-person, like reading a storybook. An excellent film all around. 10/10