It's just too bad that LeLouch is still best known in the USA for A Man and a Woman, because he's made so many fascinating films barely known in the English speaking world. This film embodies his ongoing fascination with narrative, with contorting plot strands and time and audience expectations in delightfully clever and tricky ways. (As an apostle of the pure joy of gaming a story, he seems to be a disciple of Sascha Guitry.) But that works best in the first part of the movie, when we're being introduced to the two main characters via a marvelous series of interwoven scenes in fragmented time. When the two amnesiacs are brought together in Fez, we suddenly have a much more conventional film about a robbery which may or may not have been committed by Irons, who -- if he committed it -- may or may not remember it. A subplot about a boxer and his wife is awkwardly inserted in this part of the film. It's a long movie, and feels long, but if only for the first hour or so it should be seen -- and the more conventional parts of the movie are certainly not without their charms. The locations are beautifully photographed and the leads are charismatic. But try and catch And Now My Love, or Edith and Marcel, or La Belle Histoire or Viva la vie! for better sustained and more successful examples of LeLouch's inimitable stamp. Thierry Lhermitte and Claudia Cardinale are nice to have on hand, but their star quality is not really necessary for the parts they're given.
Review of And Now Ladies & Gentlemen
