User Reviews

Filmed in noir et blanc this is more noir than blanc. `Film gris' might be a better category. Venice in the winter with stormy waters, in more ways than one, provides the backdrop to this tale of two strong characters, Eve (Moreau) and Tyvian Jones (Baker). Neither character deserves, or gets, a shred of sympathy from us, she being a ruthless gold digger and the personification of evil, he a womanising writer who takes plagiarism to new heights (or depths).

Despite this, the powerful interaction between them draws us in to their world as their doomed relationship develops. This development is far from straightforward, as one would expect with Losey directing a French/Italian production. Both main characters appear deaf to each other's needs or demands. The film starts more or less where it finishes but we do not get taken around a clear circle, rather we fly off at irregular tangents. Whilst not making for easy viewing it does, nevertheless, hold our attention.

Moreau is central and dominates every scene in which she appears. In truth when she's not on screen the film falls rather flat. I'm not convinced that casting Baker, whose expertise lay in hard man roles either military (`Zulu') or criminal (`Robbery'), was right. He just about got away with it as a university don in Losey's later film `Accident', but as a writer moving in artistic circles this may be a stretch too far. If a freebooting Welsh Lothario (in Dylan Thomas mode) was required just think what Richard Burton might have made of it!

Watch out for a brief, but wonderful performance by James Villiers as a lugubrious, plummy screenplay writer.

This is not a film for recalling the `funny bits' but I defy British viewers not to enjoy Moreau's last words in the whole film - `Bloody Welshman'. Not a term unheard in English, Scottish or Irish rugby circles – but coming from Jeanne Moreau? Hilarious and wonderful.

The film is probably about 15 minutes too long – some of the scenes between the two main characters have elements of repetition and add little to the overall development. An interesting, if flawed, movie.

I had always appreciated Stanley Baker's presence in a film but having watched him in three major roles in a brief space of time - this, HELL IS A CITY (1960) and THE CRIMINAL (1960) - I realize how undervalued his talents are nowadays! This, naturally, makes me even more incensed to have missed out on the R2 SE of another notable film of his - HELL DRIVERS (1957) - which went unceremoniously out-of-print after having been available for barely a year!!

Though not a great beauty, Jeanne Moreau manages to make her character's essential irresistibility to men convincing, while her relationship with Baker - turning eventually into humiliation - makes for undeniably compelling drama. Losey gave the two stars uncharacteristic freedom here to get under their respective characters' skin and explore their various idiosyncracies (apart from utilizing records of the era, Eve's obsession with jazz music is also reflected in Michel Legrand's original score) - which probably resulted in the film's overgenerous length (originally 155 minutes!) and its subsequent butchering by the producers - Robert and Raymond Hakim, who had previously worked with Jean Renoir on LA BETE HUMAINE (1938) and would go on to produce Luis Bunuel's BELLE DE JOUR (1967)! The film, however, also allows lovely Virna Lisi to shine with her sympathetic portrayal of Baker's tragic girlfriend (later wife).

The film's uncompromising look at the jaded jet-set may have been inspired by Federico Fellini's LA DOLCE VITA (1960) - who, in turn, borrowed EVA's cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo for his masterpiece 8½ (1963)! I especially enjoyed the film's Venetian backdrop (though it occasionally relocates to Rome): Baker is ostensibly a writer whose first novel has been turned into a motion picture, which is being presented at the world-renowned Film Festival - where, ironically, Losey's own film was declined and which I had the good fortune to attend myself a couple of years ago!! Besides, the funeral-on-the-water scene reminded me of Donald Sutherland's premonition of his own death in Nicolas Roeg's DON'T LOOK NOW (1973), also set in Venice. I don't know how faithful the film is to James Hadley Chase's source novel but its plot of an arrogant, selfish man brought down by an even more cold-hearted femme fatale certainly recalled two masterful screen versions of the Pierre Louys novel "La Femme Et Le Pantin" made by a couple of my favorite directors - Josef von Sternberg's THE DEVIL IS A WOMAN (1935) and Luis Bunuel's THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (1977) - but, while still managing to make all their points beautifully, those films were much more fun!

That said, I appreciated the film even more on a second viewing via the shorter released version (also because much of the detail had been rather obscured in the murky - and, apparently, sole-surviving - print of the longer cut, complete with forced Scandinavian subtitles): while I knew that certain scenes had been removed, I can't say that I particularly missed them; however, I was surprised to see additional footage incorporated into this version that was missing from the 119-minute cut and especially a scene (which actually constitutes one of my favorite moments in the film!) where Baker stumbles and wounds his hand which Moreau finds amusing - their relationship having soured considerably by this point - and he responds by punching her in the face!!

Despite having previously made a handful of excellent films, EVA was Joseph Losey's first bona-fide attempt to break away from genre movie-making and branch out into the art-house scene: as such, the film is not only a key work in his oeuvre but also one of his most personal. It's a pity that it turned out to be such a bitter experience, with Losey subsequently disowning the 103-minute "Producers' Version" but, given that his original cut had been shorn by over 50 minutes, that's perfectly understandable. Unfortunately, that complete version seems now to be lost forever...

Although the brothers Hakim have been made the scapegoats for their drastic cutting of Joseph Losey's film, the longueurs in the shortened version indicate that the original length of 155 minutes would have been even more tiresome. To suggest that some have done that this pretentious opus is a mutilated masterpiece requires a real stretch of the imagination.

It is customary for film historians and assorted academics to describe Losey's style here as 'baroque' which for this viewer at any rate signifies arty-farty and devoid of either structure or linear narrative. Losey had originally envisaged a score by Miles Davis which had worked so well for Louis Malle in 'L'Ascenseur pour L'Echafaud', together with some recordings of the ultimate torch singer Billie Holiday. In the event a couple of her recordings remain and we are instead cursed with an extremely irritating and intrusive score by Michel Legrand. We can at least be grateful to have cinematographers Henri Decae and Gianni di Venanzo whose images are splendid.

In a role originally earmarked for Richard Burton, fellow Welshman Stanley Baker is alas totally miscast whilst the talented but inadequately dubbed Virna Lisi is utterly wasted. It must have been quite a coup for Losey to have acquired the services of Jeanne Moreau as the title character and this exemplary artiste certainly delivers the goods as a praying mantis.

For directors seeking international recognition Italy in the early 1960's was the place to be but Losey's misguided and misjudged attempt to do an Antonioni must be accounted a failure.

I don't think "Eve" is worth the attention of anyone but cinephiles and graduate students doing work on Losey. There are interesting sequences, interesting primarily from a technical point of view, for the camera work, for the mise-en-scene, for the set decoration and so on.

But the film doesn't hold up as a story. The character development and motivation are missing in the cut I saw at New York's Film Forum on 4/15/00. In "Conversations with Losey," Losey makes it clear he saw this film as a very personal document and offers full explanations of the characters and their motivations; they simply aren't there in this 125-minute version.

The characters are two-dimensional, and, because of this, right away one is thrown out of the human dimension into a graduate school world where the film becomes a puzzle to be solved, a series of symbols to be interpreted, etc. James Leahy provides just such a literary-type analysis of the film on pages 116-124 of "The Cinema of Joseph Losey," exactly the sort of article that appeared in abundance about various European films in the late 50s and early 60s.

In the version I saw, I couldn't care a bit about the characters or what happened to them. It was never clear what Tyvian Jones saw in Eve Olivier, especially after she knocks him out with a heavy glass ashtray on their first meeting. Is Tyvian a masochist? Jeanne Moreau, as Eve, is photographed attractively here, but she doesn't have the necessary je ne sais quoi that I expect in femmes fatales.

Nor are other aspects of Tyvian's character very clear. At one point, he says that the novel he published and which earned him fame and has been turned into a successful film was, in fact, written by his brother, a Welsh coalminer now dead. What does that have to do with his fascination with Eve?

Stanley Baker, who plays Tyvian, is without sex appeal here, though in other films I've seen him in, he was quite the stud of his time, exuding a raw sexuality.

Eve's character is likewise blank. At one point she tells Tyvian a story about her youth, then laughs at Tyvian, saying, "You'd believe anything," implying she'd made the story up on the spot. She talks of having a husband but turns out not to have one. "At the end of the film we are not one whit nearer to understanding why Eve's life should be dedicated as it is to the dual passion for acquiring money and destroying men." (John Taylor, Sight & Sound, Autumn 1963, p. 197)

The supporting characters aren't fuller developed either. I know next to nothing about Branco Malloni and could not understand why Francesca preferred Tyvian to Branco. What is the function of McCormick and Anna Maria? Perhaps they were intended as foils to Eve and Tyvian, but they are in and out of the plot sporadically.

Though the film is of interest for its camera work, the film looks like many other films of the late 50s and early 60s, like films by Antonioni, by Fellini, by Resnais ("Marienbad" in particular). And why shouldn't it? Gianni Di Venanzo, who worked with Antonioni, photographed "Eve." And the film takes place in Rome and Venice. There are nightclub scenes that could have come from "La Dolce Vita"; the same with a scene at a gambling club. The film's jazz-based score by Michel Legrand makes it like many other European films of the time. And, of course, the opaque characters and the heavy use of symbolism are typical of Italian and French films of this time.

In addition to all of this, the plot was a bit confusing to me. It was not until I read the plot summary of the film in "Joseph Losey: A Revenge on Life" (pages 158-162) that I understood many points of the plot. I'd suggest that anyone read a plot summary before seeing "Eve."

But, then, should the average moviegoer have to do all this? No. Which comes back to my original point: the characters and their relationships, their story, are of little or no interest in themselves.

Of course, if Losey's original 2 hr. 45-minute version of the film were available, I might have a very different opinion of "Eve." But that version, apparently, is lost forever.

The humiliation of a vain playboy at the hands of Eva (or Eve as he

will call her), played by Jeanne Moreau occurs with too much

predictability & haste, and must in the end drag. The film should

have been cast with Burton and Moreau, & the Stanley Baker left in

a more British genre - for though Baker plays with great

intelligence, nicely turning our sympathies away as the character

receives his come-uppance, there is a curious implausibility about

the combination. Two incommensurate worlds, sexes, as a

theme to be sure, but neither can be appreciated from the other,

and so neither is enhanced.

Losey made social differences stand out. A Welsh coal miner's son and an orphaned French girl who survives by wanting money. Baker was a coal miner's son in real life. Hence the heightened irony. Losey tries to puts his stamp on this film and partly succeeds.

Eva may not be the best Jeanne Moreau film, but there is enough to like here to make it worth watching, even though the story is frankly dark and depressing, and the characters are all highly unlikable. I do appreciate the juxtaposition of ugly characters and beautiful settings, and I also felt that I was given insight into a certain subculture of European society. Too bad it is in English, rather than French and Italian, as it should be. Or maybe not, since the author protagonist is Welsh?

The only person more entranced by the spontaneous beauty of Jeanne Moreau's titular EVA than a smitten Stanley Baker is director Joseph Losey, who created a Moreau Valentine set in Venice on the outskirts of the Cannes Film Festival as Baker's newly-famous, working-class writer Tyvian Jones can't get enough from the very minute he catches her crashing his rented villa...

He's a boisterous, womanizing fluke of an author and she's a visually artistic muse, captured by Losey's camera-creative style (following Baker perpetually following Moreau) inspired by the French New Wave yet also coinciding with his own same-year's British thriller THESE ARE THE DAMNED...

Both are eerie, offbeat and splattered with Beatnik-jazz, only EVA has no real plot except for the manly writer falling deeper and deeper in love, progressively losing an artistic soul that's manufactured to begin with...

Meanwhile Mouraeau, compared to Baker's younger, softer, somewhat prettier yet blindly naive Virna Lisi as Francesca, ignites a kind of third-act love triangle, which is as mainstream as the otherwise arthouse story gets...

Ultimately the only way both EVA the character and movie falters is she never rises above the director's breezy platform, leaving Baker (and Lisi) a predictably melodramatic finale by comparison...

But if the entire point, purpose and theme is that a beautiful woman can be downright intoxicating, this is a gracefully maneuvered, two-hour hangover... without the headache.

"Eva" is based on a novel by James Hadley Chase, the British writer of American "tough-guy" novels. Director Joseph Losey overlays a cryptic story of alienation and obsession, and the beautiful photography makes the life of the film seem simultaneously glamorous and lonely.

But inside this modish story of a not-very-admirable man and the evil woman he falls in love with is a rollicking old noir screaming to be let out, with Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer as the femme fatale.

Contemporary Hollywood-style, one-thought-at-a-time storytelling is conspicuously absent here. The audience has to work to connect the dots in this film - there's no directorial hand on the back of your neck, turning your head to look at this road sign, then that, then the other. A requirement of active audience effort was once taken for granted, but is now much more rare and may be an unfamiliar experience for some viewers.

Jeanne Moreau is compulsively watchable (as always) as a woman who thinks, but we rarely know about what. The improbably handsome Stanley Baker has the time of his life acting for once, rather than punching someone's chin every twelve minutes, as in most of his films. Virna Lisi has dignity and consequence as the good girl whose love is never valued enough.

The underlying story of the film is a classic fantasy of male self-justification - man chases the wrong woman, one who treats all men badly because she can. The man lets himself be led around by his privates, he thinks with the wrong part of his body, and then he blames the hash he makes of things on the "evil" woman (see Adam's explanation to God in the Garden of Eden story). Another predessor of the film is Hogarth's The Rake's Progress.

Who the other characters are and what their motivations might be are minor questions - they are peripheral figures who only serve to focus the film on the central issues of male weakness and female inscrutability. The eternal question, "What do women want?", is enough to destroy the unstable male protagonist, and we watch him unravel in the beautifully photographed surroundings of Venice and Rome. The admirable letterbox transfer looks particularly seductive on a big-screen TV.

If you ever wondered what a film might look like that combined "The Blue Angel," "L'Avventura" and "Out of the Past," this is about as close as you'll get. Recommended to all except the most passive viewers.

A fake coal miner and fake novelist meets a fake French sophisticate in Venice, filmed by a fake expatriate director, using real locales (the canal, hotel rooms, casino tables). I did get a fair amount of pleasure from this, all coming from the two leads: Stanley Baker breaking into Welsh folksongs at the oddest moments, and showing his obsessive love for Eva all the way through, and Jeanne Moreau, more composed and more interesting than she had been for Truffaut in Jules et Jim. Gianni di Venanzo's camera work is superb; it's almost another actor in the story. I don't go all the way with Joseph Losey; I've found his style of story telling is just too contrived, whether he's in Hollywood, or England or here in Venice.

I enjoyed this upon its initial release but then heard no more of it until the recent Blu-ray release. It was poorly received at the time but I saw in the context of the films of Antonioni and Bunuel whose films I was discovering at the time. Indeed there is something of an Antonioni feel to this with a misty and mysterious Venice adding to the seeming strangeness of the allure of Jeanne Moreau's character particularly with the, admittedly dressed down, Virni Lisi and her more obvious beauty. But this is not a tale of an enigmatic and vulnerable woman a little out of reach, for this is from a book by the British writer of the rough, tough and sexy, James Hadley Chase. Much maligned by critics at the time he had considerable popular success and told of his inspiration to write coming from the equally uncompromising, James M Caine. So, no this does not have the ambiguity and dreamlike romanticism that a film by the great Italian director might. If anything this might be closer to the work of Bunuel, shot through with obsession, a casting aside of bourgeoise morality and more than a hint of masochism. Stanley Baker who had been fantastic in the marvellous The Criminal (1960) also with Losey is also good here but perhaps made to look a little second best now and again by Moreau on absolute peak form in a devastating and uncompromising role. She had made the ever popular Jules and Jim at the same time but there is no hint of the happy go lucky flirt here. Set in Rome and Venice it is the Venetian scenes that set the tone and contribute to the sense of doom that permeates much of the film. Glorious but worrying scenes of half glimpsed boats and masts and barely populated islets plus an empty St Mark's Square in the early hours, mist enclosing its exits and entrances. Losey apparently had much trouble getting, what he describes as a most personal work to the screen but it is a brilliant work and a prime example of just how great British cinema briefly became during the 1960s.

Two distinctly dislike-able characters circle one another amid the nicely photographed Venice and Rome locations; unable to break away, unable to be together it seems, but wrecking the lives of those around them. It's a promising scenario, a glamorous setting, a combination of strong cast, top name director and highly rated cinematographer. One could easily imagine Antonioni at the helm with Monica Vitti and Marcello Mastroianni as the stars. But it's not them and it really doesn't work. In the male lead role Stanley Baker is well cast as an out-of-place writer from the Welsh Valleys who's made it big with one book and now lives on an Island near Venice, the new darling of the in-crowd. He's big, bluff and rugged with undeniable presence and a convincing aura of potential violence. He isn't exactly nice to know, but you get the feeling that the right woman could bring him round. Virna Lisi as his fiancée is that woman. A Beautiful, fragile, extremely desirable character, she clearly loves him despite being well aware of his many flaws. So what on earth Baker's character finds in love-rival Eva is the huge stumbling over which this whole movie falls. Disbelief can only be suspended to a degree. Eva isn't the sort of woman to bring out the best in anyone. She's clearly supposed to be some kind of irresistible sexual predator who the ex coal miner cannot resist but she's portrayed as frankly repellent. A pouting, scornful, self obsessed gold-digger who plays off lovers against pretend-husbands. She treats Baker's character with taunting disdain at every turn and yet he follows her like an eager lap-dog. Her character might, just might, have worked if an actress of spectacular sexual allure had been cast. Instead Eva is played by Jeanne Moreau. She's a fine actress but she has nothing of the Machiavellian Femme Fatale that the role absolutely demands. Take a look at the poster/DVD sleeve photo of her with cigarette dangling from a sour, down-turned mouth. It's clear this is an actress who's screen persona is more Bette Davis than Brigit Bardot - more Rachael Roberts than Julie Christie. She plays the role with conviction but cannot communicate the essential level of sex-appeal to make the story work, even when the demure camera work teases us with extended near- views of her undressing(this is an early 60s film, so explicit it's never going to be, a lot of wardrobe doors and bath taps are strategically positioned) it all just looks more sordid than sexy. It's just not her role and no amount of beautifully filmed scenes of a wintry Venice, or glamorous parties, or stylised interiors or Alfa Romeo sports cars can overcome that. There is also some poor direction of the actors - of Baker in particular, who gets a bit too over- Shakespearian in his emoting at times (early on - the hand clawing at the face...no Stan, you were better than that, much better) and a few scenes which are simply too set-up to be plausible.In the end its not a film that holds the attention, the characters are too unsympathetic to feel any connection with and although there are moments of poetry , as a whole it's a plodding misfire. My apologies to all fans of Miss Moreau - no offence, very few actresses could have made this role work.

This film is very close, faithful to the James Hadley Chase's novel. Actually Chase gave with this book the quintessence of his whole world, whole atmosphere, among the more than one hundred books he wrote - the femme fatale, as we found in nearly each of his novels. But here you have NO criminal elements, ONLY the femme fatale line, no gangsters nor killers and blackmailers, no psychopaths either. This story is filtered, purified of allthe other ingredients that I just mentioned above.

So, back to this movie, the female character is absolutely perfect for a complex and so deep minded actress as Jeanne Moreau was all long her career. The thousand faces actress for me. The eternal search for her true identity woman on screen. Not because I am French. But she is absolutely awesome here. Back to James Hadley Chase, there were two main elements in his work. Femme Fatales and GREED, GREED, GREED. Here you have only the woman aspect. Women who ALWAYS drive men to their own doom.

Jeanne Moreau is magnificent in this heartless exposure of a Welsh fraud of a man.

Cold and vicious she has certainly become in this role of Eva, but of course as with so many beautiful young women reaching their mid-years having born the burden in a good deal colder man's world, she knows precisely where to exact her revengeful pleasure in exposing a worthless lout, and still how to appreciate the care offered her by those select men who understand her just enough to appropriately please her. Brilliant photography. solid direction holding it all together, and just enough adherence to its novel source to keep your attention along with the magnificent level of detail provided by the skilled artistic director and production design team. All this and Venice too! I'm not really sure just why I didn"t give it a 10. Go figure!

Tatkhj

A French Italian co-production; here we have Losey attempting to create a Felliniesque European Art House movie with hints of Nouveau Vague. Losey uses Jeanne Moreau to sell what is a concoction of 1950s and 60s art house clichés where character and story development are virtually non-existent. Nothing made me want to engage with the movie, and after an hour I just had to give up.

Stanley Baker is appallingly cast as the leading man, the script is dreadfully wooden, and the unremitting jazz score does not hide the fact that this series of clichés just does not work as a film. If this is interesting only for film studies students, then maybe the people writing the courses should seriously ask themselves why - Losey made many better movies and the European Art House scene of the 50s and 60s has far better examples of ground breaking cinema.

A great big pretentious yawn of a film that should have been strangled at birth.

You have to really admire director Joseph Losey who was kicked out of the US by right wing fanatics only to emerge as a star of European cinema. This absolute jewel of a film is F. Scott Fitzgerald meets Tennessee Wiliams. Losey would go on to create one of my favorite films of all time, "The Servant." It is only possible to imagine what a wonderful contribution to American films he was capable of. He was a survivor in a world gone mad, and this movie must have given him the sweet smell of revenge. I am so glad I found this on this New Year's night, 2020. What a movie to start a decade that looks like one hell of a ride to come.

Truffaut muse Jeanne Moreau was one of the sexiest women in cinema. Her features were unnaturally glamorous: the dark eyes that registered anything but passivity, eyebrows always slightly furrowed, upturned mouth will full, sensuous lips. She's on fire here; thus, her Eva transcends this material. Miss Moreau fills every scene with a physicality that looks almost choreographed yet not rehearsed. She's raw carnality personified. Combining that quality with a careless self-consciousness make it easy for one to see what's missing in today's female actors. Louise Brooks had it. Jessica Lange had it in The Postman Always Rings Twice. But nobody else really. The film itself hasn't held up unless you're a film scholar or part of the intellectual art house crowd. Characters register pain by pressing a cheek against whatever wall comes their way and letting their jaw go slack. A myriad of sixties kitsch fill the screen: white masks, fur blankets, overdubbing, a jazz-scat score, and a fishtank image Mike Nichols must have borrowed for The Graduate. We even see a character face her obsession and say with fervor, "I love you! I love you! I love you!" while they have breakfast on a piazza. I've used the term 'dated' in other reviews and I'm beginning to frustrate myself. It's an easy buzzword (like co-dependent or brilliant); sometimes it has a place but mostly I find it insulting and the wrong word to use for Eva. But the film is intellectual camp.

This film is oh so 60's that it is as much a time capsule as La Dolce Vita. The clothes, hair styles, make up, and attitudes all date this film. Even the furnishings scream `period piece'.

If you don't mind spending good money watching Jeanne Moreau strike one pose after another while wearing heavy eyeliner and false eyelashes, then this is for you. If there was a story I missed it although the theme did seem to be half decent man ruined by infatuation with femme fatale. The action takes place in Venice in the winter - no tourists, no pigeons and very bleak.

As far I could tell the action comprised Ms. Moreau strutting into a room with her hair done up trailing her fur coat behind her, lighting a cigarette, turning around blowing smoke and we see her face in close up. This scene is repeated throughout with a variation when she unpins her hair and shakes it loose, or brushes it. She also lights up before going to bed at night after hugging the cat , or maybe she lit up before hugging the cat. Maybe she gave the cat a smoke too. Stanley Baker was the man who became besotted by her although if I got it right, she despised him. Virna Lisi was his sweet little betrayed wife. Jeanne Moreau, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, posed in various couture gowns in a casino, night club, parties and smoked heavily throughout. Until the film ended.

Tyvian Jones (Stanley Baker) is a literary fraud cashing in on the talent of his dead coal miner brother. The film version of the tome is also a hit and Tyvian is riding the wave of runaway success. Living the lie he marries a gorgeous (Virna Lisi) woman but soon finds himself obsessed with a high class Venice call girl Eva (Jeanne Moreau) that destroys the marriage.

Eva's a typically quirky Joe Losey work that will have many cinephiles dissecting this luridly clunky S&M exercise as Moreau lashes away both figuratively and literally at simpering submissive Baker. It has its striking moments with Baker and Moreau giving well restrained performances amid a Venice back drop, but you soon tire of the pathetic Baker's craven subservience realized in his willingness to sacrifice his wife in favor of debasement.

If you fondly remember Jeanne Moreau from Jules et Jim, that alone will make this film well worth seeing. I recall it as a very " early 60's " movie, with not a little incoherence in the plot department. However, Jeanne Moreau's unique presence and "look" really fitted the role she played, and is something of a tour-de-force.

Jeanne Moreau in Venice, listening to Billie Holiday's Willow Weep For Me while slinking about a bedroom before bathing? Yes, please. She's such a delight, but the story wasn't for me. She plays a tough high-end prostitute more than capable of looking after herself, but the men trying to buy her things to get into her pants and being so blatant about it are yucky at the outset. One of them (the rather bland Stanley Baker) is a writer who gets quite obsessed with her, and despite her telling him not to fall in love with her, naturally does so. The story then takes a page out of W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage, with her telling him to his face that he's a loser and repeatedly torturing him, and him coming back for more despite getting married to a beautiful young woman (Virna Lisi). It's not a story I care for or can empathize with.

It's great to see Moreau and my heart trilled a little with each close-up, but these characters and their relationship are so unlikeable. Even smaller things in the script are disagreeable. When she tells her backstory, she says she was orphaned at 11 and had to sexually satisfy a married man living upstairs for money, which, even as she impishly says it's fictitious, is still unpleasant. At one point the man in explaining his infidelity to his fiancée tells her "I love all women, 6 to 60," which is also quite creepy. 6??? When Eva laughs at him for falling down, he winds up and belts her in the face, which she takes simply by saying "only my husband can do that." But it's the main story, a man repeatedly coming back to humiliation, that's hard to watch.

The production quality is decent but not exceptional, especially considering the location. It's certainly not helped by the dubbing. Aspects of the story like the plagiarism that comes out or the fate of his wife seem like melodramatic padding. The film is much too long and I didn't care how it was going to turn out. It's worth seeing if you love Moreau or the city of Venice as there are some really beautiful moments for both, but overall, this was a disappointment.

Pros: 1. The cinematography is stunning with incredibly smooth camera movement that allows for some beautiful shots. 2. Some of the to-and-fro, as well as the 'romantic' tension, between Eva Olivier (Jeanne Moreau) and Tyvian Jones (Stanley Baker) is entertaining to watch. 3. The film does a good job at highlighting how damaging a toxic relationship can be to you, and those around you.

Cons: 1. The dialogue is blatantly dubbed and it's incredibly distracting. 2. Some of the scenes are needlessly prolonged. 3. The editing and cutting at points is a little jarring, as some scenes just end way too abruptly. 4. The soundtrack and score are played way too loudly at certain points, and one song in particular (I'm not sure what it's called or who it's sung by) is literally played on repeat throughout the movie. 5. There are no likable or interesting characters to route for. 6. There is a lot of forced and unnecessary drama that just seems to be inserted to pad out time. 7. There are a couple unintentionally funny moments, such as Francesca Ferrara (Virna Lisi) crashing the boat and dying, and Tyvian Jones slapping Eva Olivier for laughing at him after he tripped and fell. 8. There is very little time dedicated to fleshing out the character of Francesca Ferrara, and her romance to Tyvian Jones, so her death falls exceedingly flat. 9. The sub-plot of Tyvian Jones plagiarising his brothers' book and selling it as his own idea literally goes nowhere, so it's a little baffling as to why it was introduced. 10. The movie repeatedly stresses that it's set in Rome and Venice and the beauty of those cities, yet it barely ever allows for the viewer to appreciate said cities as the plot mostly takes place indoors. The film could have been set in Alabama, and nothing of any significance would have been changed.

For all the hoopla surrounding Eva during it's re-release in 2000, you'll feel very disapointed after viewing it. Jeanne Moreau is interesting, but not fascinating,as the title femme fatale. The film isn't strong in plot nor characterization. It's a case of a man choosing the wrong woman=as the lovely, soft Virna Lisi is much more appealing than Moreau, in a smaller role.