The Man Who Loved Women movie storyline. Montpellier: December 1976. At the funeral of Bertrand Morane, Genevieve (Brigitte Fossey) observes the other mourners, all women once involved with him. The following is told in flashback.
Morane (Charles Denner), a man in early middle-age, works in a laboratory testing the aerodynamics of aircraft, and pursues women in a compulsive, but casual manner without showing any signs of a capacity for commitment. He goes to extraordinary lengths to locate a woman he had seen, only to discover she was briefly visiting France and lives in Montreal.
Bertrand becomes friendly with Hélène (Geneviève Fontanel), who runs a lingerie shop, but she confesses to being attracted to younger men; she is forty-one, and does not become involved with men older than thirty. He has an affair with Delphine (Nelly Borgeaud), the wife of a doctor, who gains arousal from the threat of discovery, but she is imprisoned for the attempted murder of her husband. He recollects his childhood and his relationship with his distant mother, remembering her legs in shots reminiscent of the frequent leg shots of women in the film.
He pretends to have a child in need of baby sitting in order to lure a young woman to his apartment. When she discovers the doll he has put in his bed in place of a baby and asks him what this is, he replies, “It’s me”. After a number of very casual encounters, Bertrand contracts gonorrhea, discovered at a very early stage, but is unable to recollect the names of the six women he has slept with in the previous twelve days.
Eventually, he begins his autobiography only for his typist to find the content too much to continue. Completed, it is submitted to the four leading publishers in Paris. A member of the editorial staff at one of them, Genevieve, stands up for the work against the objections of her (male) colleagues.
Rejecting his title for the book, she suggests The Man Who Loved Women, which he finds ideal. Bertrand meets Véra (Leslie Caron), a significant old flame, while the book is at the proof stage, and insists on withdrawing the book from publication because he had neglected to mention her. Genevieve though persuades him to make Véra the subject of his second book; he needs to like himself she says.
The Man Who Loved Women (French: L’Homme Qui Aimait les Femmes) is a 1977 French comedy / drama film directed by François Truffaut and starring Charles Denner, Brigitte Fossey, Nelly Borgeaud, Leslie Caron, Geneviève Fontanel, Nathalie Baye, Valérie Bonnier, Sabine Glaser, Jean Dasté, Chantal Balussou and Martine Chassaing. In 1983, it was remade in Hollywood under the same title. The film had a total of 955,262 admissions in France.
The Man Who Loved Women (1977)
Directed by: François Truffaut
Starring: Charles Denner, Brigitte Fossey, Nelly Borgeaud, Leslie Caron, Geneviève Fontanel, Nathalie Baye, Valérie Bonnier, Sabine Glaser, Jean Dasté, Chantal Balussou, Martine Chassaing
Screenplay by: Michel Fermaud, Suzanne Schiffman, François Truffaut
Production Design by: Jean-Pierre Kohut-Svelko
Cinematography by: Néstor Almendros
Film Editing by: Martine Barraqué
Costume Design by: Monique Dury
Makeup Department: Thi-Loan Nguyen
Music by: Maurice Jaubert
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: United Artists
Release Date: April 27, 1977
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