A Romantic Comedy

Earlier this week we checked out some old classic movies from the library. Tonight my husband and I watched one from 1957  called "Love In The Afternoon" starring Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn. It was a purely entertaining romantic comedy and fun for us to watch together. It's about a young cello student, Ariane, who eavesdrops on her widowed private detective father"s (Claude Chavesse) conversation with a client (Monsieur X).  After learning of his wife's daily trysts with American business magnate Frank Flannagan, (Gary Cooper) in Room 14 at the Paris Ritz, Monsieur X announces he will shoot Flannagan later that evening. Claude is nonchalant, regretting only the business he will lose (Flannagan is a well-known international playboy with a long history of numerous casual affairs). When Ariane cannot get the Ritz to put her through to Flannagan on the phone, and the police decline to intervene until after a crime has been committed, she decides to warn him herself. Ariane is in time. When Monsieur X breaks into Flannagan's hotel suite, he finds Flannagan with Ariane, not his wife, who is cautiously making her escape via an outside ledge. Flannagan is intrigued by the mysterious girl, who refuses to give him any information about herself, even her name. He starts guessing her name from the initial "A" on her purse, and when she declines to tell him he resorts to calling her "thin girl". She has no romantic history but pretends to be a femme fatale to interest him, and soon falls in love with the considerably older man. She agrees to meet him the next afternoon, because her orchestral practice is in the evenings (although she does not admit that is the reason). She comes with mixed feelings, but ends up becoming his lover for the evening until his plane leaves (though later Flannagan says he did not make it to first base with her).

Her father, who has tried unsuccessfully to protect her from knowing about the tawdry domestic-surveillance details in his files, notices her change of mood but has no idea that it proceeds from one of his cases.

After a year, Flannagan returns to Paris and the Ritz. Ariane, who has kept track of Flannagan's womanizing exploits through the news media, meets him again when she sees him at an opera while surveying the crowd from a balcony. She puts herself in his path in the lobby, and they start seeing each other again. This time, when he persists in his questioning, she makes up a long list of prior imaginary lovers based on her father's files (Flannagan is number 20 on the list). Flannagan gradually goes from being amused to being tormented by the possible comparisons, but is unsure whether they are real. When he encounters a still-apologetic Monsieur X, the latter recommends Claude Chavasse to him, and thus Flannagan hires Ariane's own father to investigate.

It does not take Chavasse long to realize the mystery woman is Ariane. He informs his client that his daughter fabricated her love life. He tells Flannagan that she is a little fish that he should throw back, since she is serious and he wants to avoid serious relationships.

Flannagan decides to leave Paris, pretending to be on his way to meet former lovers in Cannes. At the train station both keep up their act of not caring deeply for each other, although Ariane sheds a few tears that she blames on the soot. As the train departs, and Ariane runs along the platform as Flannagan stands in the door of the coach, her femme-fatale facade cracks as her love shows through. Flannagan changes his mind, sweeps her up in his arms onto the coach, and before kissing her he calls her by her name, Ariane. Chavasse reports that they got married in Cannes and now live in New York.

I guess that I enjoy watching romantic comedy's because I am a romantic person at heart and am recently re-married. My relationship with my new husband is wonderfully loving, kind and fun, which is much different that with my late husband who didn't really know how to love someone else. I enjoy watching other relationships because it's amusing and entertaining!