La Provocation (1970)

Christian (Jean Marais) and Jeanne Lambert (Maria Schell), a couple of professors in their fifties, have agreed to take a group of students to an archaeological research site in Israel. In Tel Aviv, André (André Charpak), who studied at the Sorbonne with Jeanne and Christian, is in charge of an excavation. He welcomes the visitors and puts them up at his home in Caesarea, by the sea. The student group consists of four boys and two girls. The girls are sisters. The elder, Françoise, is married to Bertrand (Veit Rolin), an old friend of Christian’s, a bon vivant who doesn’t worry about anything. The younger, Isabelle (Corinne Le Poulain), is no more than seventeen. Exceptionally beautiful, she is a child-woman, a young girl still untouched. She makes no secret of her romantic admiration for her teacher and immediately tries out her budding charms on Christian. Jeanne, who has noticed their glances and the attraction drawing them together, understands that although the dizzying feeling sweeping over Christian is not love, it is no less dangerous. Isabelle is now what Jeanne was twenty years earlier. This painful realization leads Jeanne to confide in André, her childhood friend, who advises her to be patient. However, André struggles to understand why Jeanne attaches so much importance to Isabelle’s schemes. He is sincerely appalled by the idea that a woman like Jeanne could lose all interest in a country like Israel simply because her husband has fallen for a young girl. There are more important things in the world than marital fidelity. One day, André takes Jeanne to visit an Israeli widow who has lost everything and bears her misfortune with poignant dignity. Jeanne admires this woman. Their sorrows are certainly not comparable, but Jeanne does not think that makes hers any less real. Before her eyes, day after day, against Israel’s magnificent landscapes and blazing beaches, the dance of couples forming and breaking up plays out. Jeanne finds Isabelle’s behavior especially baffling. She is a provocative girl who stops at the crucial moment and enjoys driving her prey to distraction. She seems the most defiant of these rebellious teenagers. Christian’s prestige has its appeal. He is all the more attractive because he makes no attempt to seduce Isabelle; he is no womanizer, still less a man who goes after little girls. He is simply fascinated by the dream before him, this mirage of mad love that transports him twenty years into the past, to that extraordinary time of life when everything seemed possible. He makes a point of treating Isabelle like a child, but she can see that in his eyes she is already a woman. One day, Isabelle takes Christian on a reckless motorcycle ride, during which they narrowly escape both the traps of desire and a fatal accident. One of the boys, Dominique, is in love with Isabelle. But rather than admit that Christian, that “old man,” could be his rival, he acts brutally and mocks him mercilessly. It is to provoke him that Isabelle grows ever more provocative and reckless. She even goes so far as to enter Christian’s room while Jeanne is away. Jeanne catches them, and her husband’s obvious innocence does not reassure her. One evening, during a dance, a fight breaks out between André and an overzealous young Israeli. André falls and injures himself; he has to be taken to a clinic. Bertrand, the sensible one, takes him there. When everyone thinks Christian has left too, he overhears a conversation between a student and Isabelle, which is mainly about Dominique. Exasperated by her behavior, Christian slaps her. At first stunned and wounded in her pride (for she was not merely pretending), Isabelle rejoins her classmates. Determined to make her break with childhood unforgettable, she joins in Dominique’s games with renewed abandon and gives herself to him. The excavation expedition comes to an end. The students fly back to Paris. This time, Isabelle leaves as though nothing had happened. At last, Christian, who had already sensed several times how absurd his affair with Isabelle was, returns to his wife and, taking her in his arms, rediscovers all his forgotten joy in that moment. He begins to love his wife again. Christian and Jeanne will remain in Israel for a few more weeks, having not yet exhausted its charms. Yet Jeanne will have lived through her true last summer. Never again will she know that sharpness, that freshness, that taste of mint: youth.