Summer Manoeuvres

René Clair was as innovative a director as the French New Wavers who followed him. His work from the 1920s through to the 1960s was marked by sprightly comedy, wry social satire and a highly evolved sense of irony. This lavish production from the end of his career blends all these elements and, like much of his work, the frothy facade conceals something more bittersweet - in this case, a satirically-inclined drama about the price of playing games with love.

The story unfolds just before the outbreak of the First World War. Armand De La Verne (Philipe) is the womanising officer who bets he can win the heart of a woman - any woman - before he and his men set off for manoeuvres in a month's time. Appropriately, it's at a society tombola that he settles on his prey: lonely Marie-Louise (Morgan). But Armand's charm offensive backfires: first she's unreceptive, then he finds himself falling in love with her, and finally Marie-Louise learns about the bet - a state of affairs made more complicated by the fact that Armand has a rival for her attention - the over-earnest Monsieur Duverger (Desailly).

With its sumptuous costumes, extravagant ballroom dance sequences and catty dialogue, the first half plays like a carefully observed comedy of manners. As the smooth-talking, lady-loving rogue, Philipe is fittingly hard to resist. Morgan's Marie-Louise is a cooler presence. Flirting deliciously with the camera, Brigitte Bardot is girl-about-town Lucie - not yet the icon she'd become but already exhibiting all the seductive allure that would make her name in the following year's And God Created Woman.

The plot, familiar enough now after the success of Dangerous Liaisons, moves swiftly and there's a real sophistication to Clair's elegant set-pieces and ironic juxtapositions. By the final third, however, the frivolity has gone and the conclusion is the stuff of tragic melodrama. (Claire shot an alternative ending, available on the DVD, even bleaker than the version he settled on.)

Efficiently paced and beautifully shot, this is a colourful cautionary tale by a director who, as always, skilfully balances urbane wit with a genuine concern for his characters.