In Claudia Cardinale’s 1960s heyday, she was an actress whose world-class looks did nine-tenths of the work for her; the other tenth wasn’t in the same league.
So the loveliest attribute of Spanish director Fernando Trueba’s (“Belle Epoque”) film is Cardinale’s wry, melancholy performance as the title artist’s wife. Time’s been allowed to carve its way into that glorious face, and it’s more expressive than ever. Her character was once muse to her sculptor husband (Jean Rochefort).
Now she looks at his new model (Aida Folch), a Spanish refugee not much more than a teenager, as though contemplating a lovable gambler who’s about to blow his life’s savings at the poker table. Beauty is never spent wisely.
Otherwise, this movie is dreamily pretty but insubstantial, Rochefort playing artistic brooding as almost pure grumpiness. It’s shot in black and white and set in France during World War II. The desultory Resistance subplot seems put there to provide substance the script can’t otherwise deliver. Folch, while a pleasure to behold, takes the model-as-blank-slate aspect a little too far.
Cardinale’s few brief scenes are the ones with the most depth; her facial lines really did come along with some wisdom.