Le dernier baiser (1977)

The film takes place in Paris and then Brussels. It depicts the meeting of two women of the same age who are otherwise opposites: one is a somewhat idealistic, romantic taxi driver, while the other is a well-to-do, idle bourgeois woman, quite determined to track down her husband, who has left with another woman. A bond develops between the bourgeois woman and the working woman. Annie, a Paris taxi driver, decides to look for her lover at his workplace, but he has disappeared without leaving an address. Disappointed, she decides to meet a friend for an evening out. On her way, while cruising around in her taxi, she meets a fur-coated bourgeois woman who wants to follow her husband. Annie agrees to conduct surveillance, allowing the elegant woman to discover that her husband is cheating on her with another woman. Disheartened and disillusioned, the bourgeois woman decides to stay with the taxi driver and accompany her on her wanderings around Paris, but she cannot move on. The next day, the bourgeois woman seeks Annie out and asks her to continue following her husband. They eventually end up in Brussels, where the unfaithful husband has gone with his mistress to a racetrack to share his passion for horses with her. Annie and her client friend eventually follow the illicit couple to their hotel, where they book a room next door to theirs. They spend the time talking about their misfortunes and romantic disappointments. The following day, the surveillance continues in the Belgian capital. Gradually, Annie starts spending time with the couple in order to spy on them more closely. Then, understanding their behavior, she explains to her friend that her husband is very much in love with this woman. Their second night at the hotel gives them a chance to discuss their own responsibility as women who have been cheated on and abandoned. Annie says, “A forty-year-old man would gladly trade a woman of the same age for two twenty-year-olds.” Then they burst out laughing... A new day begins, and the surveillance continues. Although the husband has a business meeting, they decide to follow him by car anyway. Annie and her bourgeois friend then follow him on foot and arrive at a theater, where they find the husband listening to his mistress play the piano. In fact, she is a stage performer. The wife feels humiliated all over again: the mistress can play the piano, and she cannot. Still following the couple, they eventually reach a small inn by a lake, accessible by boat. Annie sits alone at a table near the couple’s. Using a curious ruse, she eventually lures the husband out of the inn alone and threatens him with a revolver to find out more about his intentions. Does he want to be with his mistress or return to his wife? They sit on a bench, and Annie talks about love. She eventually lowers her revolver and admits why she is there. She repeats her question: “Her or the other one?” And if passion is the real feeling, will that passion last? She even admits that she loves him, forgetting about the other woman and the mistress. The husband suddenly kisses her, then leaves, declaring, “This is all so stupid!” Annie gets back into her taxi, leaving the bourgeois woman all alone in Brussels at night. She goes back to her modest life as a Paris taxi driver and, with luck finally smiling on her, even wins a radio contest.