A FRENCH WOMAN was advertised as the story of a woman drifting between desire and convention on a journey of self discovery but to me it was an attempt by the Director/ Narrator to glorify and exonerate his mother's (=main protagonist) intrinsic sluttishness and huge egos leading to multiple infidelities. Compared to the other great French woman in the movie A VERY LONG ENGEGEMENT, who, against all odds, embarks on a relentless, painful, long and often frustrating ordeal to find out the truth about her supposedly dead boyfriend, the protagonist in this movie would be seen as nothing worse than a sluttish whore.
First, after her husband comes back from the war, he correctly says to her," we are not heroes and you are a whore". Then she says "take me wherever you go, I have so much love to give you". After her husband forgives her and accepts her excuse for having multiple affairs with numerous men (instead of one affair with one man if she is a woman who believes in true love and not lust and sex) as "to give me the strength to keep going on", she goes on and bears the infant twins her husband does not father and she breaks her promise and has an affair with a German industrialist in Berlin.
Then when the German lover tells her that he wants a family with kids and does not want to wait anymore for her and just becomes her sexual lover, she becomes cool and tells her son, "He is a nobody" when her son asks her who the man is.
Then after the lover leaves her, she has multiple affairs with other men again until her death.
I am sure if she leaves her husband and marries the German boyfriend, she will have affairs with other men again. As the saying goes, "once a whore, always a whore".
So I think the movie should glorify the poor husband's greatness in repeatedly forgiving her, taking her back despite her numerous infidelities, treating the twins like his own, staying in the marriage for the sake of their children and telling friends that the big scar at the back of his back is from a shot in the war with the Vietnamese enemy instead of from his own wife, doing that in an attempt to save her German lover from being bashed to death by him.
I am sure few men in the world can be as forgiving as her husband to a constantly unfaithful wife.
At the end of the movie, the narrator states, "That day, Loius wondered whether it was love that killed Jeanne." I would call it lust and sluttishness not love and I feel sympathy for Louis and admire his greatness as a husband and father and I feel nothing but disgust and sadness for the Director's efforts to portray the egoistic sluttish woman's infidelities as self discovery.
First, after her husband comes back from the war, he correctly says to her," we are not heroes and you are a whore". Then she says "take me wherever you go, I have so much love to give you". After her husband forgives her and accepts her excuse for having multiple affairs with numerous men (instead of one affair with one man if she is a woman who believes in true love and not lust and sex) as "to give me the strength to keep going on", she goes on and bears the infant twins her husband does not father and she breaks her promise and has an affair with a German industrialist in Berlin.
Then when the German lover tells her that he wants a family with kids and does not want to wait anymore for her and just becomes her sexual lover, she becomes cool and tells her son, "He is a nobody" when her son asks her who the man is.
Then after the lover leaves her, she has multiple affairs with other men again until her death.
I am sure if she leaves her husband and marries the German boyfriend, she will have affairs with other men again. As the saying goes, "once a whore, always a whore".
So I think the movie should glorify the poor husband's greatness in repeatedly forgiving her, taking her back despite her numerous infidelities, treating the twins like his own, staying in the marriage for the sake of their children and telling friends that the big scar at the back of his back is from a shot in the war with the Vietnamese enemy instead of from his own wife, doing that in an attempt to save her German lover from being bashed to death by him.
I am sure few men in the world can be as forgiving as her husband to a constantly unfaithful wife.
At the end of the movie, the narrator states, "That day, Loius wondered whether it was love that killed Jeanne." I would call it lust and sluttishness not love and I feel sympathy for Louis and admire his greatness as a husband and father and I feel nothing but disgust and sadness for the Director's efforts to portray the egoistic sluttish woman's infidelities as self discovery.