Love in the Afternoon

1957 "Love is a game any number can play... especially in the afternoon..."
7.1| 2h10m| NR| en
Details

Lovestruck conservatory student Ariane pretends to be just as much a cosmopolitan lover as the worldly mature Frank Flannagan hoping that l’amour will take hold.

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Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
Micransix Crappy film
Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.
Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.
Foawen First things first. I remember the first time I fell in love with Gary Cooper. Of course, I had seen some of his movies before, but I was a kid back then and nothing stuck for too long. Then, when I was about 20, I started watching (and enjoying) old movies and one day they showed this rather intense western on TV (The Hanging Tree) and I was instantly mesmerized by Cooper's beauty. He was 3 years older than in Love In The Afternoon. If someone had told me back then that such a stunning man was too old for me, I would have put them in the place they deserve: a labyrinth for meddling people, who need work hard to find the concept of "consenting adults". Cooper was nothing but a gorgeous hunk during his whole career.Don't get me wrong, Hollywood does have an issue with big age differences: The issue is that their arrow of time only points in one direction. They never pair much older actresses with younger actors, even though many are still beautiful and desirable in their 40's, 50's and older. The issue is that Hepburn never got a much younger on screen love interest, in spite of being beautiful all her life. Unfortunately, it looks like this imbalance doesn't seem to have an end.However, the age difference IS the reason for this movie to exist at all, so it worked for me 100%, even if trying to guess Ariane's age was a little distracting. I mean, at first I thought she was in her late twenties, but then they put her in pigtails (Hepburn looks ridiculous, btw) and made comments pretending to make her a few years younger. However, her friend, Michel, is clearly in his thirties and the other students are even older (some look middle-aged and balding). So after a little back and forth, I settled with Hepburn's true age or a couple of years younger. It makes her characterization somewhat weird, but it can be excused by her having lived a sheltered life and having Chevalier's character for a father.Hepburn is marvelous here, of course. After all, this is the kind of role she could play in her sleep. She and Cooper are very charming and funny together and I also love their dynamic with Chevalier. The plot has been explained many times here, so I'll just say that Hepburn's character, Ariane, is not a naive girl, who falls in love with the wrong man. She knows very well who and what he is and I would say that's the exact reason why she falls for him. She might lack experience in romantic love, but that doesn't make her dumb or a victim. She devises a plan to get him to fall in love with her. In fact, she's very deceptive and manipulative for a supposedly naive girl, but it works and it doesn't come off as creepy, because Hepburn is magical like that. Cooper plays the middle-aged Don Juan millionaire, Frank Flanagan, who is well into his 50's and still going strong in the female attention department. In his mind, there is no reason to complicate his busy life with a serious relationship. He is honest about it and doesn't deceive his lovers with false promises. It is this character, who goes through the big character growth, while everyone else remains more or less static. In the first half of the film, he's the cynical hit-and-run lover, while in the second half Ariane manages to get under his skin and torment him, until he's ready to feel true love. Cooper sells simmering vulnerability like nobody else and he does this here without unnecessary histrionics. He has the ability to keep a perfect balance between drama and comedy, that feels natural and real. I believe Mr. Flanagan, when he shows that he cares deeply for this lovely young woman. That's why the second half of the film, the part showing his transformation, is my favorite and why the final scene is one of the best and most beautiful romantic endings ever.My favorite scene (other than the final one) is the one with the drink carts going to and fro between Mr. Flanagan and the gypsies, while he listens to Ariane's recording and gets drunk. It's seamlessly fantastic!Chevalier is also great, of course! As Ariane's father, he couldn't have been more perfect. Protective and loving, but never stifling. He doesn't go crazy, when he learns the truth about Ariane and Mr. Flanagan, he's just understanding and tries to do the best for his daughter, even if that means letting her go.The band of gypsies was an inspired choice to accompany Mr. Flanagan in his amorous adventures. I like to think of them as a parallel to the detective's role in Ariane's life. Both worked as crutches, that needed to be left behind, to begin a new life.
Semisonic The cinema language is indeed a product of its times. And, just like some things weather out thousands of years barely changing and some flex and bend every now and then, so do the aspects of how movies tell their stories. The stories that remain clear and true through the decades we call classic, while some once-actual films look as if the only place they belong to today is some dusty shelf in a museum. And Love in the Afternoon seems like the latter type, no matter how I had wished it to be otherwise.I'll be honest, I quit watching this film halfway through - because of its total ugliness. No, not because it was black-and-white and with a "mere" stereo - the technical aspects hardly bothered me. It's the language the film used that was absolutely unbearable. The language of telling the love stories.Can't say it's totally this film's fault. I've seen other films from that era, for instance, My Fair Lady also featuring Audrey Hepburn. And all the films of that time are ugly when it comes to the portrayal of the interaction of two sexes. Women are always dumb as a door knob, easily falling for the most ridiculously rude men, while men are either ridiculously rude and abusive (and proud of it of course) or ridiculously weak and thoughtless. Either way, a man is always the boss while a woman is always to follow and to adapt.Yet at least My Fair Lady had a certain competition between the gender archetypes, with the woman not brilliant but at least streetwise and boisterous, and with the man conceited but also ridiculed for that. That allowed for a much more realistic composition, resulting in the story that stands relevant till the days of now. On the other hand, Love in the Afternoon looks like a classic 50's flick where women still have no right to have brains or dream of anything but some guy. What makes it even worse is that here Hepburn is just 28 and her heroine seemingly even younger, but the film postulates as her love idol a totally narcissist jackass pushing 60, and that jackass being Gary Cooper doesn't help a bit. The man is, by the film's own decree, utterly no good, yet he seems to skim all the cream off the life and what it can offer, women included.I have no idea if that abhorrent premise is to be reversed in the second act of the film. If it is, well, maybe my rating should go one or two points up. However, from what I've seen, it seemed that the only direction this film could go is to legitimize that no-good person yet again. Which might even have some outer gloss, Audrey Hepburn being cute and all, but an absolute absence of any balance between the gender roles and a total predictability of the characters turn Love in the Afternoon from a romantic flick it once was into a travesty and a caricature of the topic. Maybe this is how the guys and girls were supposed to act back then, but nowadays the only way one can view this film is as an educational material on who NOT to be and how NOT to behave. Both in the afternoon and in any other time of day.
mark.waltz Poor Audrey Hepburn. Her waif-like persona keeps the older gentlemen interested, from William Holden and Humphrey Bogart in "Sabrina", Fred Astaire in "Funny Face", Cary Grant in "Charade" and Rex Harrison in "My Fair Lady". I guess they feel she needs a father figure. Here, her papa is Maurice Chevalier, playing against type, and very amusing doing so. He's a private detective whose client (John McGiver) discovers his wife is having an affair with an American playboy (Gary Cooper). Hepburn rushes off to warn Cooper that his lover's husband intends to shoot him and as a result falls head over heels for him. This provides the funniest sequence in the film, McGiver's seemingly drunk hubby sneering like Edward G. Robinson has he creeps through the halls of Cooper's hotel. But this is where the amusement ends. The film seems to drag for the next hour and a half as Hepburn pretends that Cooper is only one in a long line of daddy types. She is never convincing in that area, which she isn't supposed to be, and Cooper's befuddled amusement only indicates that he is actually bored.This update of Ernest Lubitsch's 1930's sex comedies provides roles for two stars of some of those films, Cooper and Chevalier. This is basically an update of the character that Cooper played in the film version of Noel Coward's "Design For Living" while Chevalier ("Love Me Tonight", "One Hour With You") takes away the rascally romantic scoundrel and plays a much more serious part. He would return to the old type of roles in his next film with "Gigi". Some people may be put off by Olga Valéry as the hotel guest who keeps spanking her barking dog. She is meant to be comic relief, but the repetitive joke simply goes on too long.I've always been disturbed by the ending, always utilized in Hepburn tributes, which has an air of lechery to it.
edwagreen Gary Cooper was too old to play the jet-set playboy here. His age was really showing. Granted that the part called for an older man, but Cooper looked like he was ready to slow-down. He was not suave and debonair. He came across as a senior citizen hooked on romantic flings with the ladies around the world.Audrey Hepburn, who saves him from the clutches of John McGiver, one of Frank's (Cooper) paramours, after her father, the indomitable Maurice Chevalier, catches them in the act.As the private investigator, Chevalier is given little to do here.The picture takes a turn when Cooper begins to get a dose of his own medicine. Hepburn, now another of his ladies, tells him of the men in her life.The black and white atmosphere makes the film somewhat drab, and the constant Paris showers doesn't help much either.