The best Claude Piéplu’s romance movies

Henri Serin, a sales rep in umbrellas who lives in Saumur, is bored with his life. Married to an unloving, uptight wife, who, unlike him, has no interest in sex, he is also rejected by his children. Thus, he spends most of his time travelling from town to town, flirting with women and meeting all kinds of people in the hotels, restaurants, shops and places he visits. He also dabbles in painting, particularly portraits. After his car breaks down as he is driving through Brittany, he meets a rough, foul-mouthed painter who offers him to stay at his house, near Pont-Aven. There, Henri falls in love with Angela, the painters model and fling, and soon they run off together...

French filmmaker Claude Miller's This Sweet Sickness is based on a suspense novel by Patricia Highsmith, of Strangers on a Train fame. In the original, the murder-protagonist was a psychotic, pure and simple (if such words are appropriate here!) In Miller's version, the "hero," David, is a pathetic creature, motivated by humiliation and sexual inadequacy; thus the emphasis is not on his heinous crimes but on his warped personality. The director's noirish decision to stage much of the action in the dark, or the rain, or both, is a function of David's deep depression. As in his other films, Miller uses water as an omen of evil; you've seldom seen a more foreboding swimming pool than the one in This Sweet Sickness. The film was originally released as Dites-lui que je l'aime.

The seven stages in the life of the modern Frenchwomen are disclosed by seven directors in a witty way: 1 - Childhood, 2 - Adolescence, 3 - Virginity, 4 - Marriage, 5 - Adultery, 6 - Divorce, 7 - The Single Woman.