La Chamade (film)

La Chamade (also titled Heartbeat in English) is a 1968 romantic drama film directed by Alain Cavalier from a screenplay he co-wrote with Françoise Sagan, based on Sagan's 1965 novel of the same name. It stars Catherine Deneuve and Michel Piccoli.

Plot
Twenty-five-year-old Lucile is the beautiful mistress to Charles, a wealthy, kind-hearted businessman who provides for all her material needs, but for whom she has no true love. When she meets a charming young man her own age, Antoine, she falls in love. He finds her a menial job in a publishing firm, but she can not or will not hold it down. Soon she becomes pregnant with his child. But Charles helps her through her crisis by funding her abortion – against the wishes of Antoine, who nevertheless accepts, even though he planned on moving out of his bachelor flat, the three of them into a soulless concrete block, money being short. In the aftermath, her feelings for the younger Antoine fade. Eventually, she returns to the good-hearted businessman who has patiently waited for her.

Cast

 * Catherine Deneuve as Lucile
 * Michel Piccoli as Charles
 * Roger Van Hool as Antoine
 * Amidou as Etienne
 * Philippine Pascal as Claire
 * Jacques Sereys as Johnny
 * Irène Tunc as Diane
 * Jean-Pierre Castaldi

Production
La Chamade was filmed on location in Paris and Nice.

Filming took place in April 1968 and was interrupted by riots in Paris.

Reception
Upon its theatrical release, La Chamade received generally positive reviews. In his review in The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, "Cavalier may have created a practically perfect screen equivalent of the novelist's prose style." In addition to praising the performances by Deneuve and Piccoli, Canby writes: "La Chamade (literally 'the heartbeat') is a movie of technical skill and pure images that capture the textures of things—whitewashed walls, a piece of modern sculpture, cut flowers, flesh tanned in the sun—all of which give reality to a narrative line from which everything nonessential to the affairs of the heart has been refined. The extraordinary thing is that, in this day and age, it not only works but also seems somehow urgent, at least while it is going on."