This reminded me of one of those instances in my life when even though I was in a monogamous relationship, that being human, I looked at another woman and wanted to be unfaithful. Though this isn't my favourite of Rohmer's works from an outstanding part of his career (that would have to be 'My Night at Maud's'), this would have to be right up there, and is recommended to anyone who appreciates excellence in foreign cinema, particularly from masters of the French New Wave. As well, that famous moment of the older man looking up the ladder and seeing the beautiful young woman's bare knee and feeling that longing has to be THE finest depiction of that feeling in all of movies. Glorious, heartfelt, extremely intrinsically rewarding work.
Monique, a high class escort, has always been able to give her clients exactly what they want, while clean cut Thomas has always been exactly what everyone has expected. But tonight Thomas' curiosity is going to get the better of him while demanding of Monique the one thing she's reluctant to offer. Honesty, costs more.
Matt, a young glaciologist, soars across the vast, silent, icebound immensities of the South Pole as he recalls his love affair with Lisa. They meet at a mobbed rock concert in a vast music hall - London's Brixton Academy. They are in bed at night's end. Together, over a period of several months, they pursue a mutual sexual passion whose inevitable stages unfold in counterpoint to nine live-concert songs.
After Dr. Bill Harford's wife, Alice, admits to having sexual fantasies about a man she met, Bill becomes obsessed with having a sexual encounter. He discovers an underground sexual group and attends one of their meetings - and quickly discovers that he is in over his head.
Lili, a pouty and voluptuous 14-year-old, is caravan camping with her family in Biarritz. She's self-aware and holds her own in a café conversation with a concert pianist she meets, but she has a wild streak and she's testing her powers over men, finding that she doesn't always control her moods or actions, and she's impatient with being a virgin. She sets off with her brother to a disco, latching onto an aging playboy who is himself hot and cold to her. She is ambivalent about losing her virginity that night, willing the next, and determined by the third.
After five years of marriage, Diana discovers the joys of adultery, claiming that she can save her failing relationship through betrayal.
Wanda is a dominatrix who runs a gallery in a building on the Hamburg waterfront, where audiences pay for the privilege of watching her humiliate her slaves. She is a business woman who smashes sexual stereotypes and social taboos with icy self-possession and an enigmatic smile. As artist she specializes in the staging of elaborate BDSM fantasies and her affairs transgress the usual boundaries of personal and professional life. Along the way she leaves her German lesbian lover, a shoe fetishist, for an American "trainee," and does more than step on the toes of the male performer who has broken the rules of the master-slave relationship by falling in love with her.
Rémi is a man trapped in a deteriorating marriage. When his wife is unexpectedly killed in a car accident, Rémi is left with his stepdaughter, Marion, who chooses to stay with him rather than live with her birth father. After the initial shock passes, Rémi is caught off-guard when Marion begins expressing her attraction to him. Initially repulsed, Marion's mature beauty wears him down as he finally caves to her seductions.
Phillip Filmore is a naive, 15-year-old, preoccupied with sex, who develops a crush on Nicole Mallow, the new 30-something, French housekeeper and sitter to look after him when Phillip's father is out of town for the summer on a "business" trip. But Mr. Filmore's unscrupulous chauffeur, Lester Lewis, takes advantage of Phillip's crush on Nicole to hire her to seduce the youth, then draws her into a plot to fake her own death in a blackmail scheme aimed to drain Phillip's trust fund.
When the mother of two adoptees is tipped off about the possible affair her husband may be having with one of their children, her sense of duty takes a macabre turn.