Les mauvaises rencontres

Alexandre Astruc himself once told how this movie had badly dated.Seen today,it is terribly boring.Handicapped by constant voice over provided by the leading actress in a funeral voice and by the "narrator" who ridiculously sermonizes about today's -that is to say in the fifties - youth,this story seems too intellectual ,too superficial ,to move us deeply .Even a burning subject (abortion) was not that new since Henri-Georges Clouzot had already broached it in his classic "Le Corbeau" a decade earlier.The entire story is told with flashbacks ,the heroine sitting in a police station .Alexandre Astruc would do much better with his fine adaptation of Guy De Maupassant's "Une Vie" (1958).In that movie,the voice over is never irritating ,for Claude Renoir's dazzling cinematography easily makes up for it.