MartinHafer I will admit it up front that I am old fashioned. I believe in monogamy and many old fashioned values. So, when I see a film like "La Chamade", I have a great difficulty enjoying it. After all, the folks in this film seem awfully amoral and selfish. So why should I care about them and their petty problems?! The film begins with Lucile (Catherine Deneuve) being Charles' (Michel Piccoli) mistress. She lives well, as Charles is rich and indulgent--he obviously loves her. However, when she meets Antoine (Roger Van Hool), she falls for him and decides to keep both men as her lovers. But, Antoine is the jealous sort and after leaving his wife, he insists that Lucile leave Charles--which she eventually does. However, now that she no longer has all of Charles' money, she needs to work-and work is not for pretty people like her. So, she sells off all her jewels and just lounges about doing whatever she wants. Eventually, she becomes pregnant and bored with Antoine. So, she gets an abortion and returns to Charles. And, considering how nice Charles has been about all this, you wonder why he wants her back (apart from all their hot sex).When I write all this about the plot, I realize exactly why I disliked the film--the main character, Lucile, is morally bankrupt. She doesn't like to work, mistakes sex for love and just seems very shallow and self-absorbed. So why should I care about her and her petty problems? I dunno. It's a shame, as this IS a beautiful film--nicely filmed and the actors were quite food. But when the story involves people you cannot relate to and seem so selfish, you aren't left with much.

tintin-23 A heart that beats "the chamade" (la chamade is a particular drum beat) is a heart ready to surrender to the charms of an adversary. This film is a poor adaptation of Françoise Sagan's tedious novel of the same name. In the novel, Sagan, faithful to her fetish themes of indolence, gilded youth, easy money, and fast cars, depicts in unflattering terms the superficiality and immorality of the French high bourgeois society of the 1960s. Sagan and Chevalier collaborated on the thin, tiresome screenplay. The three main characters are so flatly drawn that even two high-caliber actors such as Deneuve and Piccoli must continuously struggle through tepid platitudes and situational predictability throughout. Roger Van Hool as Deneuve's young lover is so insipid as to effectively block any audience sympathy for the story. We are quickly bored with the comings and goings of these three uninteresting characters, and we don't care about what happens by the film's end.Of course, I know of many fates worse than spending 100 minutes watching the camera caress La Belle Catherine -- a forty-years younger one, as well -- but if that's all the film has to offer, then ultimately it's just not worth watching.

Kara Dahl Russell Catherine Deneuve is one of film's all time great beauties who has also become a very fine actress. At this point in her career, she was still blank but beautiful. Her Director put this to good use, casting her as a woman who is pampered, spoiled, a woman for whom life has given her so much she is completely lost and has no idea what she really wants, but drifts from vague whim to whim. Of course, she is such a beauty that she is perfect casting for this kind of woman who has men falling over themselves just to light her cigarette, and the kind of jealousy and possessive controlling impulses beauty brings out in men.Lightly handled, this film is a visual discussion of the true nature of love, and the tradeoffs we make in finding the right relationship. Money and stability, passion and poverty are contrasted, with some surprising revelations about what makes a love meaningful and lasting. Yves St. Laurent supplies the really amazing wardrobe for the sequences of wealth ( I counted at least 5 really flawlessly coutured coats), which seems at first to make this film very glossy and superficial and "what will she wear next" – but this supplies our framework of seeing how unimportant these things are to her, and also builds a great contrast for the sections of everyday financial struggles.This film is greater than the sum of it's parts. Great costumes, some postcard style cinematography, and a fine performance by Roger Van Hool as the obsessed Antoine, and an exceptional, nuanced performance by Michel Piccoli as Charles. (He and Deneuve had made several films together by this point, which augments the familiar feeling between them.) Because DeNeuve is still young here, and the essential capricious coldness of her character, this film does not supply as much emotional connection or depth as it could. We have only Piccoli as a window for that, so this film becomes a man's view of the beautiful woman they adore, and a fine representation of their incomprehension of women. Historically, falling in step with "free love" and early feminism, it is a great representation of that special time when men really could not figure out what women wanted… because women were still trying to figure it out themselves.

Rod Evan Courtesy of MGM Movie Channel I was at last allowed to see one of the best popular films of 1968 in France. 'La Chamade'. This is a disgracefully neglected film which manages in a not too dissimilar way to Antonioni's 'Blow Up' to show the compulsion and emptiness of living with too much leisure and wealth.Deneuve is at her most beautiful and along with 'Belle de Jour' this must be one of her more complex roles of the period. The extraordinary thing about the film is that the characters roam the bars and go to parties and chic restaurants and musical evenings seemingly oblivious to the political trauma that was happening in 1968.If memory serves me right Sagan wrote 'La Chamade' before the events of May '68 and for all I know the film may have been completed before the month of May, but in hindsight the facts that we now know cast a long shadow over the lives of these beautiful people consumed by their own selfish desires. A small masterpiece.