French writer/director Claude Lelouch remains a prolific artist (he even made a 9/11 movie), but it's one of his first films, made almost 40 years ago, for which he remains best known.

A Man and a Woman was France's definitive love story for a decade, the Love Story of its generation and a thoroughly French example of its take on romance. Laconic, wandering, and bordering on hopeless, it's easy to see why the film has more fans among the heartbroken than the lovey-dovey.

Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant play the titular characters, both young widows with complicated lives: He's a race car driver, she's got kids. Okay, they're complicated for French lives, anyway.

What follows their chance meeting is a series of abortive dates, daydreams, and endless car races. Lelouch jumps between color and black & white willy-nilly. He flashes back, even to a musical number. In the end, he won a Best Foreign Film Oscar.

From today's perspective, the film has a When Harry Met Sally... structure but lacks much charm. Aimée and Trintignant are mopey (they're widowed, so that's forgiveable, I guess) and can't seem to commit, and their dalliance lacks much in the way of thrills or even relatability. Not being a widow or a Frenchman, I suspect there's something lost in translation -- but that's just as it relates to me. The world as a whole embraced A Man and a Woman, and Lelouch even brought his stars back for a sequel: A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later. Now on DVD, Lelouch goes back again in a 37 Years Later documentary plus various trailers.

In the end, it's an interesting piece of film history. I fear it's lost much of its luster over the years, though the terminally romantic (emphasis on terminal) will find it endlessly endearing.

Aka Un homme et un femme.