A
film review by Michael Reuben for blu-ray.com on February 8, 2017.
Love in the Afternoon is narrated by
Claude Chavasse (Maurice Chevalier),
a cheerfully cynical Parisian Private Investigator, who specializes in
matrimonial work. A regular stimulus to his business is American magnate Frank
Flannagan (Gary Cooper), who travels
the world overseeing his business interests and romancing an array of women,
heedless of their marital status. (Pepsi is one of Flannagan's major investments,
and its then-current ad slogan, Pepsi-Cola
hits the spot! is a running joke.) Currently Flannagan is entertaining the
unnamed wife (Lise Bourdin) of a
Paris businessman (John McGiver),
whose suspicions have prompted him to hire Chavasse. When the detective
presents Monsieur X with photographic proof of his wife's betrayal, the
distraught husband announces his attention to shoot Flannagan dead - to the
consternation of Chavasse's daughter, Ariane (Audrey Hepburn), who overhears the exchange from the next room,
where she is practicing her cello.
Racing
to the Hotel Ritz, Ariane interjects herself into the proceedings and narrowly
averts a crisis. In the process, she attracts the interest of Flannagan, to
whom she refuses to identify herself. He dubs her thin girl, and a long (a very long) courtship begins, with Ariane
routinely pretending to be a shady lady trailing a string of lovers. (She gets
the details from her father's case files, which she's been reading on the sly.)
Chavasse
is unsuspecting of his daughter's new-found interest. He thinks she spends her
afternoons and evenings practicing and rehearsing at the conservatory, where
fellow musician Michel (Van Doude)
has an obvious crush to which Ariane remains oblivious. Her trysts with
Flannagan are confined to the afternoons (hence the title), and director/co-screenwriter
Billy Wilder remains coyly equivocal
about just how much intimacy occurs during those hours. A line was added in
post-production (I never got past first
base.) to reassure bluenoses that the relationship never became physical,
but it's an obvious and ineffective fig leaf for an ambiguity that was clearly
intended as a sexual tease. When Chavasse eventually learns of the
relationship, he intervenes with a degree of calm that would seem almost
unnatural in anyone but a jaded Frenchman. By that point, Flannagan has
surprised himself by falling in love. Embarrassment and confusion are the only
remaining barriers to a happy ending, but those are easily dispatched.
That's
really all there is to Love in the
Afternoon, but Wilder and co-writer I.A.L.
Diamond (in the first of many collaborations) draw out the story to a
length that is deadly to laughter. The film's best parts are those that focus
on players other than the lead couple, exploiting for laughs the scrambling of
the hotel staff, the misadventures of a yappy dog owned by an imperious
long-term guest (Olga Valery) and
the deadpan reliability of the Gypsies, the musical quartet retained by
Flannagan to serenade his conquests. Whenever Chevalier's Chavasse appears to
comment on love's folly with the mocking detachment of someone who long ago
abandoned such foolishness - he is, of course, a widower - the film briefly
rises into the rarefied air where laughter erupts. Indeed, the single best
sequence in Love in the Afternoon is
its opening, where Chavasse provides a guided tour of l'amour Parisienne, which is so infectious that it can break out
even at a funeral. If Love in the
Afternoon had maintained the wry amusement of that initial sequence, it
could have been a classic. Instead we're treated to strained interludes between
two stars whose chemistry is less than electric and whose efforts at banter are
sufficiently labored that the viewer has plenty of opportunity to reflect on
just how unlikely their relationship really is.
Blogger’s
comment: Much has been written of the age gap between Cooper (55) and Hepburn
(27) and clearly it requires suspension of disbelief. There is some decent
dialogue, however. In one sequence, Ariane is describing Americans in general,
and Flannagan in particular, to fellow musician Michel: They're very odd people you know. When they're young, they have their
teeth straightened, their tonsils taken out and gallons of vitamins pumped into
them. Something happens to their insides. They become immunized, mechanized,
air-conditioned and hydromatic. I'm not even sure whether he has a heart. When
Michel asks: What is he, a creature from
outer space? Ariane replies: No, he's
an American.
Labels:
comedy, romance
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