Jean Valère – Les grandes personnes AKA Time Out for Love (1961)

Quote:
Successful fashion executive Michelle (Micheline Presle, The Assassin) attempts to commit suicide when she realizes that the man she loves, Philippe (Maurice Ronet, Purple Noon), has started drifting away from her. But she fails and an American beauty, Anne (Jean Seberg, Breathless), helps her get back on her feet.

Soon after, Michelle hires Anne to help her with her daily projects. She also changes her hairstyle and shows her what dresses to wear so that she looks as attractive and elegant as the Parisian women. When Philippe reappears, she encourages her to start exploring the city with him.

Convinced that she has found a true friend that cares for her, Anne becomes emotionally attached to Michelle. She tells her that she loves her and that she has helped her discover how beautiful life could be. Anne also begins spending time with Philippe and eventually falls madly in love with him. For a while she assumes that they were meant to be together and that Paris is the most romantic city in the world.

But when a dramatic event allows Anne to see a different side of Philippe’s personality, she concludes that it would be best if they ended their relationship and she went back to America with her fiancee. Before she leaves Paris, she meets Michelle one final time to tell her that she would never stop loving her.

Jean Valere’s Time Out for Love was one of three films Seberg made in France during the 1960s after appearing in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. The other two were her husband François Moreuil’s debut film, La recreation a.k.a. Role Play, and Philippe de Broca’s L’amant de cinq jours a.k.a. Five Day Lover. The latter was recently restored in 2K and will arrive on Blu-ray later this year.

The story of Time Out for Love is as simple as it sounds. Seberg plays a naive American girl who wants to experience the essence of life by having a passionate affair. When Michelle pushes her in Philippe’s arms, she assumes that her friend is helping her and allows herself to fall in love with him. After the initial euphoria, however, she gets her heart broken.

The purity and elegance are what make the film worth seeing. Initially, Paris looks like the idyllic city where everyone eventually falls in love. Seberg’s character assumes that her time has also come and begins living her dream. There are a series of glorious visuals with her and Ronet running through the streets of Paris that remind of the romantic sequences from Breathless. But then the dream ends and suddenly Paris becomes just another busy city full of people wearing masks.

Seberg looks effortlessly elegant and brittle and it is not at all difficult to believe that a young girl like her could fall madly in love with an older man without realizing that she is being used. Presle is also very elegant, but her eyes are tired. Towards the end, it becomes obvious that she is a slightly different and older version of Seberg’s character — a disillusioned loner who wants to be loved again. Ronet is very good as the charming driver who wants something entirely different in his life.

The editing is slightly uneven at times, but the film is gorgeous. It was lensed by the legendary Nouvelle Vague cinematographer Raoul Coutard (Francois Truffaut’s Jules and Jim, Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt).

Les grandes personnes.1961.576p.BDRip-AVC.ZONE.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 36 min
Size: 	2.17 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	958x576 
Aspect ratio:  	5:3
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	3 000 kb/s
BPP: 	0.227
Audio
#1:  	French 2.0ch AC-3 @ 224 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/E24CE5FB309C1FF/Les_grandes_personnes.1961.576p.BDRip-AVC.ZONE.mkv

Language(s):French
Subtitles:English, French