In 1961, having first been seen on screen in Robert Bresson’s 1956 film, Un condamne a mort s’est echappe, François Leterrier went into directing after a stint as assistant to Louis Malle and Yves and Marc Allégret. He chose as his subject a Roger Vailland novel, published in 1948, adapting it with its author. Les Mauvais coupstells the story of a couple breaking up. Milan (Reginald D. Kernan) and Roberte (Simone Signoret) have been married for 10 years. But after he retires from motor racing following the death of his best friend, things no longer work between them. In this, his first production, Leterrier denied having copied the style of his mentor: “More than anything else, Robert Bresson has been an ethical role model. Having watched him work, I discovered that making a film is first and foremost about digging one’s heels in for a given time. But it’s true that cinema became something that made sense to me after meeting him. And that’s how film should feel, if only because one of its themes is the opposition of performance and presence, theatre and life.” The life of the couple behind closed doors evokes Bresson’s minimalism, with foggy wintry landscapes set to the cawing of crows. Shot in Bagnoles-de-l’Orne and Saint- Fargeau, head cameraman Jean Badal captures the Burgundian countryside wonderfully in sumptuous black and white. The minimalist, atonal music of Maurice Le Roux lends the film a sombre tone, reminiscent of certain Claude Chabrol noir films that are scored by Pierre Jansen. On the film’s release, the press complained that the lead character was Roberte, and not Milan, as in the novel. As Jean de Baroncelli wrote in “Le Monde”: “Roger Vailland’s novel was the story of a man. Simone Signoret has turned everything on its head. On the screen, the ‘wrong moves’ alluded to in the title became the drama of a woman.” Nowadays, this shift to the female character feels perfectly fine to us, especially as Signoret is utterly splendid in this role as a woman in her forties who knows her youth is behind her, but continues to live life intensely. As Milan puts it: “Roberte is a flame. A roaring flame.” This is a film that deserves to be rediscovered for Simone Signoret’s magnificent performance.

Christine Leteux