The film is not balanced; in other words there is one tremendous, career-defining performance by Maurice Ronet, and then a succession of bit parts played sometimes well and sometimes badly by supporting players. It's all Alain, all of the time. True, Dubourg the Egyptologist is given some cogent lines to speak trying to call Alain to reason, but we know immediately that it's no use, Alain is firmly committed to his downward path. He knows he's only a gigolo with women, not a husband; a poseur in political movements--what must his Algerian army buddies really think of a man with no solid commitments to either the French or the Arabs? Yes, Alain is a fraud on all fronts; he's not even a writer although we see him scribbling some trifling thoughts in his room at the clinic.
I think of Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces, J-L Trintignant in The Conformist, Robert Ryan in Caught: men who have lived catastrophic lives because they can't understand their emotional dissonances. I add Maurice Ronet to this list of very damaged men.
I think of Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces, J-L Trintignant in The Conformist, Robert Ryan in Caught: men who have lived catastrophic lives because they can't understand their emotional dissonances. I add Maurice Ronet to this list of very damaged men.