A Gentle Woman (1969) on Netflix
After his wife's death, Luc, a pawnbroker in Paris, remembers their marriage. She had come to his shop to sell her dead family's belongings, and he fell in love with her.
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- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb7.3/103,474 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes92%
Trailer
Plot summary
In Paris, Luc runs a pawnshop, and a young woman comes to him one day to sell what is left of her dead family's belongings so that she can pay for her studies. He falls in love with her, and she agrees to marry him. Their married life goes badly. Luc loves her in a possessive way and tries to control her, while she stays dreamy and sensitive. The story is told in recollection, as Luc thinks back over the marriage and the possible reasons for her death. The setting is present-day Paris, not the Saint Petersburg of the original story.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about A Gentle Woman (1969)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Fashion model Dominique Sanda made her screen debut in A Gentle Woman, cast by Robert Bresson, who used only non-professional actors as in all his films except his early work; he said he chose her after seeing her picture in a fashion magazine and as a result of her first voice call.
- Bresson eliminated the age gap between the couple in Dostoevsky's story, arguing that incommunicability between two people, which he regarded as a major theme of the film, "exists without a difference in age".
- A Gentle Woman was the first film Robert Bresson made in colour, and it moved Dostoevsky's 1876 story "A Gentle Creature" from 19th century Saint Petersburg to contemporary Paris.
