Love in the Afternoon

Dir. Billy Wilder

130 Minutes

USA

1957

Starring: Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier, John McGiver

***/*****

Been quite a while since I've seen a Wilder film and even longer since I've seen one for the first time, and while Love in the Afternoon is not particularly very interesting for me alongside the works of his that I love it does have sequences that remind me of what attracts me to him so much. Audrey Hepburn plays the daughter of a private detective (Maurice Chevalier, very charming here) who get tangled up with an American playboy (Gary Cooper) who, much to the chagrin of many local husbands (and the delight of Chevalier who gets the extra business), is sleeping around with a harem of women (complete with a band that takes residence in his hotel during the seduction). Cooper becomes fascinated by Hepburn, who stays initially at a distance but becomes slowly raptured by his charms.

Initially reception of the film was soured by the age difference between Hepburn and Cooper, and while that sort of thing rarely bothers me it feels oddly glaring here (and interestingly when compared to Donen's Funny Face with her pairing with Fred Astaire during the same year, something just feels. . . off---even more interesting, Cary Grant turned down the role because of the age difference, but would later team up with Hepburn in Charade under the direction of one Stanley Donen). It is not Cooper's performance (which he was very happy with and upset with the public response of the film) that is the issue, but the pairing of the two never feels anything other than kind of awkward, and perhaps a lack of chemistry can be the fault.

The film excels when it offers the set pieces that Wilder was so good at, and the early sequence charting the meeting between the couple across two hotel rooms and a corridor is especially well done and has a marvelous understanding of space. Though Wilder is not as cynical here as usual, and some of the sentimentality comes across as a bit forced rather than organic. There is no real bite to the proceedings (unlike the opening montage and monologue by Chevalier which is wonderful), and this becomes a bit more frustrating in the second hour. I wanted to like this film more than I did, and whenever I would settle into its rhythms something would come along and make me resist it. Part of me wonders if Wilder connected most with the world-weary, but hopeful, Maurice Chevalier, scheming to get these two together out of some kind of exhausted obligation rather than legitimate happiness with the pairing.

August 24th, 2019