

22/10/1982
Set amid the European community in an unspecified North African country, a colony on the verge of nationalism just before the war. And colonized is what happens to a French diplomat, Julien Rochelle, when he meets the mysterious beauty Clothilde de Watteville. Schmid 's favorite axiom, that love is projection, never had such a thorough airing. Is Clothilde really the wife of a French official now holed up in Siberia? Or is she Hecate, goddess of black magic and devourer of the Arab boys she meets far from the European quarter? Only our projections know for sure; for the rest, she is a "woman looking out into the night." Drawn from a novel by Paul Morand, who based the main character on his wife Helene, Schmid's film achieves an atmosphere of magic in which psychological credibility is not so much absent as irrelevant-a film that distances itself from the drama it invokes, perhaps as the elusive Clothilde turns her back on the madness she provokes.

Bernard Giraudeau
as Julien Rochelle

Lauren Hutton
as Clotilde

Jean Bouise
as le consul de France

Jean-Pierre Kalfon
as Massard

Gérard Desarthe
as Le colonel de Watteville

Juliette Brac
as Miss Henry

Patrick Thursfield
as L'Anglais

Suzanne Thau
as La tenancière du bordel

Raja Reinking
as La fille du bar

Mustapha Tsouli
as Ibrahim

Teco Celio
as Le capitaine Berta

Rose-Marie Schneider
as

Irene Staub
as

Karen Schenker-Donovan
as

Liz Panama
as

Michel Journot
as
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