Foawen First things first. I remember the first time I fell in love with Gary Cooper. Of course, I had seen some of his movies before, but I was a kid back then and nothing stuck for too long. Then, when I was about 20, I started watching (and enjoying) old movies and one day they showed this rather intense western on TV (The Hanging Tree) and I was instantly mesmerized by Cooper's beauty. He was 3 years older than in Love In The Afternoon. If someone had told me back then that such a stunning man was too old for me, I would have put them in the place they deserve: a labyrinth for meddling people, who need work hard to find the concept of "consenting adults". Cooper was nothing but a gorgeous hunk during his whole career.Don't get me wrong, Hollywood does have an issue with big age differences: The issue is that their arrow of time only points in one direction. They never pair much older actresses with younger actors, even though many are still beautiful and desirable in their 40's, 50's and older. The issue is that Hepburn never got a much younger on screen love interest, in spite of being beautiful all her life. Unfortunately, it looks like this imbalance doesn't seem to have an end.However, the age difference IS the reason for this movie to exist at all, so it worked for me 100%, even if trying to guess Ariane's age was a little distracting. I mean, at first I thought she was in her late twenties, but then they put her in pigtails (Hepburn looks ridiculous, btw) and made comments pretending to make her a few years younger. However, her friend, Michel, is clearly in his thirties and the other students are even older (some look middle-aged and balding). So after a little back and forth, I settled with Hepburn's true age or a couple of years younger. It makes her characterization somewhat weird, but it can be excused by her having lived a sheltered life and having Chevalier's character for a father.Hepburn is marvelous here, of course. After all, this is the kind of role she could play in her sleep. She and Cooper are very charming and funny together and I also love their dynamic with Chevalier. The plot has been explained many times here, so I'll just say that Hepburn's character, Ariane, is not a naive girl, who falls in love with the wrong man. She knows very well who and what he is and I would say that's the exact reason why she falls for him. She might lack experience in romantic love, but that doesn't make her dumb or a victim. She devises a plan to get him to fall in love with her. In fact, she's very deceptive and manipulative for a supposedly naive girl, but it works and it doesn't come off as creepy, because Hepburn is magical like that. Cooper plays the middle-aged Don Juan millionaire, Frank Flanagan, who is well into his 50's and still going strong in the female attention department. In his mind, there is no reason to complicate his busy life with a serious relationship. He is honest about it and doesn't deceive his lovers with false promises. It is this character, who goes through the big character growth, while everyone else remains more or less static. In the first half of the film, he's the cynical hit-and-run lover, while in the second half Ariane manages to get under his skin and torment him, until he's ready to feel true love. Cooper sells simmering vulnerability like nobody else and he does this here without unnecessary histrionics. He has the ability to keep a perfect balance between drama and comedy, that feels natural and real. I believe Mr. Flanagan, when he shows that he cares deeply for this lovely young woman. That's why the second half of the film, the part showing his transformation, is my favorite and why the final scene is one of the best and most beautiful romantic endings ever.My favorite scene (other than the final one) is the one with the drink carts going to and fro between Mr. Flanagan and the gypsies, while he listens to Ariane's recording and gets drunk. It's seamlessly fantastic!Chevalier is also great, of course! As Ariane's father, he couldn't have been more perfect. Protective and loving, but never stifling. He doesn't go crazy, when he learns the truth about Ariane and Mr. Flanagan, he's just understanding and tries to do the best for his daughter, even if that means letting her go.The band of gypsies was an inspired choice to accompany Mr. Flanagan in his amorous adventures. I like to think of them as a parallel to the detective's role in Ariane's life. Both worked as crutches, that needed to be left behind, to begin a new life.

Semisonic The cinema language is indeed a product of its times. And, just like some things weather out thousands of years barely changing and some flex and bend every now and then, so do the aspects of how movies tell their stories. The stories that remain clear and true through the decades we call classic, while some once-actual films look as if the only place they belong to today is some dusty shelf in a museum. And Love in the Afternoon seems like the latter type, no matter how I had wished it to be otherwise.I'll be honest, I quit watching this film halfway through - because of its total ugliness. No, not because it was black-and-white and with a "mere" stereo - the technical aspects hardly bothered me. It's the language the film used that was absolutely unbearable. The language of telling the love stories.Can't say it's totally this film's fault. I've seen other films from that era, for instance, My Fair Lady also featuring Audrey Hepburn. And all the films of that time are ugly when it comes to the portrayal of the interaction of two sexes. Women are always dumb as a door knob, easily falling for the most ridiculously rude men, while men are either ridiculously rude and abusive (and proud of it of course) or ridiculously weak and thoughtless. Either way, a man is always the boss while a woman is always to follow and to adapt.Yet at least My Fair Lady had a certain competition between the gender archetypes, with the woman not brilliant but at least streetwise and boisterous, and with the man conceited but also ridiculed for that. That allowed for a much more realistic composition, resulting in the story that stands relevant till the days of now. On the other hand, Love in the Afternoon looks like a classic 50's flick where women still have no right to have brains or dream of anything but some guy. What makes it even worse is that here Hepburn is just 28 and her heroine seemingly even younger, but the film postulates as her love idol a totally narcissist jackass pushing 60, and that jackass being Gary Cooper doesn't help a bit. The man is, by the film's own decree, utterly no good, yet he seems to skim all the cream off the life and what it can offer, women included.I have no idea if that abhorrent premise is to be reversed in the second act of the film. If it is, well, maybe my rating should go one or two points up. However, from what I've seen, it seemed that the only direction this film could go is to legitimize that no-good person yet again. Which might even have some outer gloss, Audrey Hepburn being cute and all, but an absolute absence of any balance between the gender roles and a total predictability of the characters turn Love in the Afternoon from a romantic flick it once was into a travesty and a caricature of the topic. Maybe this is how the guys and girls were supposed to act back then, but nowadays the only way one can view this film is as an educational material on who NOT to be and how NOT to behave. Both in the afternoon and in any other time of day.

Charles Herold (cherold) This charming movie has an utterly ridiculous premise and an ending as implausible as it is predictable, and yet it works quite well. In the film, Audrey Hepburn is a young woman who lives with her private- detective father and is fascinated by his sordid cases, finding the affairs and suicides wildly romantic. She becomes involved with a particularly notorious playboy, Gary Cooper.People object to Cooper/Hepburn's 30-year age difference, but I think the problem is more Cooper than the age difference. Director Wilder originally offered the part to Cary Grant, who was only 3 years younger than Cooper and who played opposite Hepburn quite successfully a few years later in Charade. I think people would have been far less bothered with Grant in the role, both because he was a better actor than Cooper, who had limited range, and because Cooper seems somewhat weak and ill; apparently he had health problems. Even then, I didn't find him as awful as some did; he still had a certain folksy charm, even when playing a cad.The story is not, I think, entirely unrealistic. Hepburn's character was full of a foolish romanticism and Cooper's character fascinated her before they even met. If you can accept that a woman would be intrigued by an inveterate player (and ultimately there are women who are attracted to Casanovas), then Hepburn's fascination and dissembling make perfect sense, at least when aided by Hepburn's beautifully tuned performance. Young beautiful women do sometimes fall in love with powerful, much older men, even if it seems nuts that they do.Throughout the movie, I was worried that I would be aggravated by the ending I expected, but while I got pretty much that ending, I thought it actually worked well. Somehow Wilder waded into the absurdity so slowly and smoothly, and Hepburn and Chevalier as her father were so dead on, that I could believe the whole, ridiculous thing. This is also a beautifully directed movie. While it's a very slight comedy, there is a lovely formal structuralism to it. It is a movie that is clearly by a talented director, yet not a movie that is trying to show off those talents. The scene with the liquor tables is beautiful but also practical and unshowy. Everything is like that; nothing is extraneous.There is a lot to object to in this movie, particularly the rather indulgent view the film takes toward Cooper's unsavory character and the utter silliness of the whole thing. Yet Hepburn's radiance, Wilder's brilliance, and an amusing script make the movie far more enjoyable than it has any right to be.

davidgarnes I expected to like this film...Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, Billy Wilder, Paris...But I was disappointed by its cynical manipulation and totally contrived ending.The great age difference between Cooper and Hepburn, made even more so by the fact that she's supposed to be a young student in this film (making him more like her grandfather), was remarked on, I believe, in some contemporary reviews. But this is not a reason to find fault with the relationship. It's more that it is difficult to understand how an intelligent young woman, albeit one who is somewhat naive and romantic, could be infatuated by, continue to be beguiled by, and eventually fall in love with the unpleasant lecher played by Cooper. Despite the charm that Gary Cooper has shown in many of his films, here he seems...well, tired and not really acting as though he at all believes in the rancid character he's playing, and he's right.The premise of the film is sour and cynical and the farce doesn't work. The ending injects a jarring sentimental note that only confirms the earlier implausibility of the "relationship" that the script would have you believe the two leads have. Doesn't work.Audrey Hepburn is her usual magical self, but even she can't make me believe in her character. She is certainly worth watching, however, for the moments when she is, indeed, someone who might appeal to the Cooper character as more than a one-night stand. Maurice Chevalier is surprisingly appealing here and doesn't lay on the French accent and mannerisms that he continued to polish over the years. But, again, he's done in by the script. In his very last scene in the film, he does a total flip-flop in point of view, again demonstrating the screen writers' (Wilder and Diamond) manipulation to ensure a romantically satisfying and totally unbelievable ending. So...nice musical score, lovely black and white cinematography, a charming Hepburn, an appealing Chevalier...but a Wilder misfire, big-time.