Les Dames du bois de Boulogne

Sexuality takes precedence over salvation, but there is the same interiority, the same intensity, the same rigorous exclusion of all inessentials.

It is slow, solemn, rigidly conventional and as stilted as a silent film, but it shows Bresson's early ability to catch sober and smoldering moods with his camera.

Praised by such filmmakers as Jean-Luc Godard and Michelangelo Antonioni, the film is rarely screened.

Sometimes all it takes to plunge us head over heels into a melodrama is a face, in this instance the face of actress Mara Casares.