Undescribable Perfection

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Love in the Afternoon (1957) was co-written and directed by Billy Wilder. It stars Audrey Hepburn as Ariane Chavasse, a young student at a Paris conservatory. Maurice Chevalier is her father, a skilled private detective. Gary Cooper portrays Frank Flannagan, a fabulously rich American who never appears to work because he's too busy being a serial seducer.This is a terrible movie in almost every respect. Audrey Hepburn was a brilliant actor. However, at age 28, she was too old to play an ingenue whose mind clouds over every time she thinks of Cooper as her dreamboat.Cooper, at age 56, didn't look or act like an international playboy who would sweep a young woman off her feet.Only Chevalier looked right, and acted his role with reasonable skill. This movie was shown in 35mm as part of a "Youth in Love" series at the Dryden Theatre of the George Eastman Museum. We weren't able to see it that evening, so we watched it on DVD. At least we didn't have to make the trip into Rochester to see this truly bad movie.Incidentally, my low rating of this movie is a minority report. Love in the Afternoon has a very good IMDb rating of 7.3. Did the raters see the same movie that I saw?*BIG SPOILER* Reader, she married him. *BIG SPOILER*

Love in the afternoon! This movie makes me so emotional, and I ended up crying so hard at the end. Firstly, yes, it was such a vivid dream for a girl at the age of 19, trying to impress a millionaire bachelor with an uncountable number of love affairs. The young girl impressed me so much. She has such a beautiful soul and heart, with her kindness showing off in every little thing she does. I can say she is like a lone carnation in between a society that is full of greedy and neglectful people. I love so much the way she lied to him about her numerous number of love affairs, she proves that every one can play little love tricks to get their lovers to fall in love with them, and her stories made me laugh out loud many times. I love how she is fully respectful to the man she loves, that she would rather lie to him so that he can be the way he is than to put him in difficult decisions. Frank - the lead man character reminded me so much of the one I love and our story. In fact, my man said exactly what Frank said to Ariane: "He loves and runs away, lives to love another day". I have to be honest, I disagree with that kind of love, to me it is more like a coward being afraid of getting hurt and decide to just play with love instead of spending time and putting some effort for his love. I have to agree in one thing though: love is just not an easy game to play with, as long as you get addicted to it the loss of it can cause a lot of pain. I did not like Frank's personality, and Gary Cooper did not play the role perfectly either. At the end Frank decided to take Ariane with him permanently, but the actor did not convince me his full motive in doing this. For me it is a bit weird to not admit that he loved her but still took her and married her in the end. For me it was a bit like he felt bad for her and took her for granted. Still, the beauty and love of Ariane did touch my heart. I was so glad that she finally had a happy ending with the man she was in love with (or obsessed by). I am very sympathetic to how she would have felts, and admire her so much for her bravery and awareness of giving the best to the person she loves. A 10-star review for love. It is always worth it for a lovely love story.

This film by Billy Wilder features beautiful B&W photography. Gary Cooper stars as a supposedly smooth womanizer (Frank Flannagan) who cares little for the women he beds. Audrey Hepburn plays a younger woman (Ariane Chavasse) who is intrigued by his intrigues and becomes personally involved.Shot in France, the film conveys a cosmopolitan air that almost sells the idea that these two might connect emotionally. But Cooper is not smooth enough to pull if off (no surprise) and the relationship between the two does not convince. It's not an issue of age; it's about chemistry and personality. Bogart in "Sabrina" offered the same problem, though less so. As an example of another pairing that worked well despite a sizable age difference, consider Stewart and Kelly in "Rear Window".Frankly, I'm surprised that such obviously poor pairings plague numerous films, but apparently some believe that box office draws can overcome such issues.

Billy Wilder's immensely entertaining May/December romance is one of the director's lightest. Gary Cooper is a wealthy American heart-breaker finally undone by Parisian waif Audrey Hepburn. The dialogue is chock full of snappy one-liners and there's undeniable chemistry between the two leads. Yes, Cooper is way too old for Hepburn, but he's Gary Cooper so it's never anything but believable that Hepburn would be so smitten with him. The Paris location work adds a lot as does the astounding art direction by Wilder regular Alexandre Trauner. Maurice Chevalier is Hepburn's pragmatic father and John McGiver is hilarious as the exasperated husband of one of Cooper's conquests. Audrey Young (Mrs. Billy Wilder) has a clever cameo.