farrokh-bulsara Anne (Anouk Aimée) and rally pilot Jean-Louis (jean-Louis Trintignant) meet in Dauville, in Northern France, where their respective children study in boarding school: both widows, they guess to start a relationship, but their past could be an obstacle.Putting aside the programmatic banality of the mushy plot, "Un homme, une femme" is a very interesting film for the way it's written, then filmed, as the image of memory substitutes word, music denies dialog and oppresses the picture (the famous and frivolous theme by Francis Lai), the sudden editing, the freshness of a style that, by color or b&w print, hand camera or frenetic cuts, has been academic as prototype/stereotype of French cinema, and even, years later, a sample for commercials. Style, of course, isn't enough to make happier a schmaltzy and predictable story – where death, as love, is just anecdote –, but Lelouch has done a good job creating a nice compendium of pictures, music, sounds, faces, and drawing a love mythology – kisses, hugs, doubts, thoughts, stations, trains, telegrams, phone calls, car rides, hotel rooms, dilemmas and confusions – which is banal, gratuitous, partial, but incisive and well kept in rhythm.*** out of 5

Armand is my central memory. that mixture between music, past, meetings, Monte Carlo atmosphere, phone calls, I love you, children and love between she and her husband, the beach, the old man and his dog, the meeting in final, in a train station. and music. again. a film about love but in a delicate - fragile way. romantic but out of definitions about romanticism.a man. a woman. and a meeting. nothing else. the children, the Sunday , the colors of memories - pieces around an axis. a salad with many fruits but an unique flavor. a legend , a lesson about limits of feelings, nice common crumbs and masterpiece of passion.that is all. like a hot bread. like a race. like a telegram. like a beach, a dog and an old man.

bandw The story is thin: Anne (Anouk Aimée) and Jean-Louis (Jean-Louis Trintignant) meet, fall in love, have a hiccup, then move on to a happy ending. He is a race car driver and she is in the movie business (at some high level that I could never identify). The only things that lift this above soap opera--there being a suicide, an accidental death, a near fatal car accident--are its stars and its style. It's a mood piece using soft focus, some poetic imagery, extreme close-ups, telephoto lens shots, and a romantic score. Some of the mood shots may or may not work for you, like a *long* take of a dog running on the beach. In the spirit of full disclosure I can attest that if you have a dislike of auto racing, then that will detract from your enjoyment. I think that in well over half of the scenes cars play a role: people talking in cars, people racing cars, cars on oval tracks, cars being worked on. This could have been titled, "A man and a Woman and Cars." This may have been an early example of product placement, since the Ford Motor Company got some advertising here.On occasion a scene is inserted that appears to have no relevance, but then it turns out to be a scene from a movie that Anne is working on. I think the primary goal of those scenes and the auto racing scenes are to provide some variety and excitement to prop up an otherwise weak plot line. The screen time devoted to Trintignant's profession totally eclipses that for Anne's and I found that that unbalanced the story.This slight film is overly calculated to please. I came away with only a superficial understanding of this man and this woman.

Eumenides_0 A Man and a Woman depicts two ordinary people falling in love in an ordinary way: with little drama, tension or conflict. They simply meet on a chance day and their relationship steadily blossoms from there on. It's predictable, but contains that truth that exists solely in the domain of Art.Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimée are perfect in this movie. Each plays their characters with simplicity and tenderness. This is not a deeply psychological movie. These characters exist in the moment, giving themselves to life in the fullest. Perhaps that's why I watched this movie with a smile on my face from the start to finish. Their make this movie so pleasant and seductive. There's never a scene that builds resistance. This movie wants you to fall in love with it. And I think it succeeds.The technical aspects of the movie are perfect too. I loved the cinematography, which alternates from black-and-white to colour. The script is also very good, but not because of its dialogues; in fact the script is great because it tells the story mostly visually. With such two great actors facial expressions are more than enough to display feelings and ideas. But in order not to let silence overtake the movie, Francis Lai has composed one of the greatest scores in cinema for it. Many of the songs in the movie are classics in Europe and my parents, who didn't know the movie, at least recognised the songs from their teen years.Claude Lelouch and Pierre Uytterhoeven have created a masterpiece of cinema, one of its best love stories.