Bresson’s second feature and his last using professional actors.It’s a devilish take on the love triangle theme. Wonderfully scripted by Jean Cocteau, sexuality takes precedence over salvation.

THE PLOT

A revenge drama, in which a jealous woman seeks vengeance on the man who spurned her by tricking him into marrying a prostitute.

Based on a novel from Diderot, Jacques le fataliste.

 “Only the conflicts that take place inside the characters give a film its real movement.”

- Robert Bresson

REVIEWS

“Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne is a renowned masterpiece of cinematic storytelling and psychological insight.” – BFI http://filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/info_110.html

“With his second feature film, director Robert Bresson was already forging his singularly brilliant filmmaking technique as he created a moving study of the power of revenge and the strength of true love.” – CRITERION COLLECTION

“Although it proved to be critically and financially unpopular (owing in part to its use of highly stylized costumes and formal dialogue), it contained the seeds of what would later become hallmarks of Bresson’s work, namely the kind of spare, icy calm that pointed to an interior world of quiet alienation.” – MUBI http://mubi.com/films/les-dames-du-bois-de-boulogne

“this is a film full of sensationalism and emotion” – David Thomson http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/261-les-dames-du-bois-de-boulogne-the-earrings-of-robert-bresson

A DARK TALE

“Destiny is tragic but I prefer a fate we choose to one forced upon us.”

-Agnès (Elina Labourdette) in Robert Bresson’s Les dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945)

“At the film's heart is the actress Maria Casares who gives a compelling performance as the woman who is driven to destroy the object of her most ardent desire. Her co-star lina Labourdette is also powerful in the role of Agnes, the woman for whom Helene's lover has fallen.

The visual style - rainy streets, belted trench-coats, cars looming out of the darkness - has much in common with the iconography of film noir and adds another rich layer of meaning to this engrossing film.” – THE BFI