THE STORY OF ANNE FONTAINE’S FILM, Nathalie, is simple enough. Catherine, a middle-aged married woman (played by Fanny Ardant), discovers that her husband, Bernard (Gerard Depardieu), has been cheating on her. She hires a prostitute, Marlene (Emmanuelle Beart), to seduce him and report back on his sexual preferences. The prostitute invents a character for herself - Nathalie - whose tales grow ever more florid, to the point where it is almost as if the two women are having the affair.

It seems salacious, but it is cerebral. Sex is described, not seen. The film explores the power shifts within relationships and the possibility that men and women have different expectations of love.

It seems a peculiarly French exploration of love. It is difficult to imagine a British film-maker exploring these themes without hiding behind the skirts of comedy. Casting would be a problem. Beart, the beautiful star of Manon Des Sources, brings a wholesome insouciance to the prostitute, while the regal Ardant retains a glorious sensuality at 55.

 

But are our attitudes to love and infidelity really so different? I asked Beart, who replied that she didn’t know enough about the British to offer an opinion. Ardant was more forthcoming.

"Non! Like saying we like the cheese and the bread and the Tour Eiffel, it is a cliché. In your society they speak about Queen Victoria and that left a strong imprint. But in the real facts we are similar."

I mentioned the fact that President Mitterand’s mistress attended his funeral and Ardant laughed.

"Look at your Royal Family. We think about the Puritanism that comes from America, but it is just a way to speak. After all, they do the same as us. You know, Clinton and this poor Monica Lewinsky. Une affaire d’état!  For us, this is ridiculous. But what matters the most - you did it, or you didn’t do it."

This may be true, but it does little to diminish British frigidity about l’amour. Consider the details. First, I met Beart, then Ardant. We were alone, except for a translator, in separate hotel rooms. Beart spoke in French, with flurries of English. Ardant spoke English with a sultry accent and wisps of French. It was hard to tell which was more alluring. During both encounters I began to feel like poor old Gerard Depardieu, led to destruction by his hormones.

Beart is a big star in France and was once part of a couple with the actor Daniel Auteuil, so she can be very private. She talked about Nathalie being dreamlike, a fantasy: "But I think in real life a lot of women would do something as crazy as that, to stay alive, to refuse to compromise, to show their resistance against the situation. And I, Emmanuelle, as a woman, would do that, if I loved."

The problem in long-term relationships, she said, was the way women experience their sexuality. There was interference. "Not interference between a man and a woman, but interference within a woman, within her mind and her body. The clash. That being said, men and women have changed and are changing, and both sexes allow their different sides to show. Men allow their femininity to show and vice versa. I think that makes things more complex and more interesting."

Just as I was about to ask to borrow her Touche Eclat, Beart started talking about fidelity. The trick was to resist the idea that passion has to die. It was about finding energy and strength.

"C’est beaucoup d’amour et beaucoup de travail, aussi." The chaperone, or translator, interjected. "It’s very much about love, but also about hard work."

"Vigilance," said Beart. "De la vigilance. But it’s scary. Everyone finds it scary."

But, I said - trying to distance myself from M. Depardieu - it isn’t a very good excuse for adultery to say: ‘I did it, but it didn’t really mean anything.’" "No," Beart replied, "and perhaps this is a difference between male and female sexuality. But when he says to her, ‘Look it’s nothing and it has no bearing on my feelings,’ I think he is being honest. But each time he says these things it is like he is plunging a knife into her heart and this is what drives her to do that crazy thing."

AND THEN THERE WAS FANNY. LOVE, Miss Ardant said, "is the grand story of life". And in the less grand story of Nathalie, she approved of her character because she refused to accept that love was lost. In similar circumstances, Ardant would hope to feel the same. But she has never been in similar circumstances.

"I am so stupid that I have the feeling that I was never betrayed. If you don’t have - comment dire la preuve? - the proof. If you have the facts and you have the proof, that is another thing. But I love this lady because she is an ordinary lady. She is not romantique, or extraordinary. She has a normal job. And suddenly she becomes romantic. That is the moral of this story. Don’t be conformist. Don’t be, ‘Oh, I can’t do that’. Be free."

"You see, a love story is like a masterpiece. You have to work, like you have to work on a painting or a cathedral. If you live with someone since the age of 20, it is much more difficult than at the beginning of love."

Ardant talked for a while about the film and the attractions of "a softer life - a pink life", and the fact that it is always possible to change something in "your vie amoureuse". When I awoke from my faint, she was talking about female power. "It depends on your view of life," she said, clicking her fingers. "You have to be positive. Or, if you are not, give up everything. You can accept things, but don’t turn yourself into a victim.

"If you say, ‘My husband doesn’t love me anymore,’ OK, it doesn’t matter, move on to other things. But if you don’t accept the fact, don’t say, ‘It’s so and so’s fault’. I prefer to consider the fact that in the world, you are unique. You are only your life and it depends on you. Because if not, the life is passed and you have all these reasons to say, ‘Ce n’est pas mon défaut [it isn’t my fault].’ We can’t be in a strong mood all the time. We have moods sometimes when we are at the bottom of the well."

It seemed a shame to break the spell, so I asked Ardant about her first love affair. It was "tragic," she said. "Because he didn’t love me. I was very young. Too young. I was 15. I was still in school. I thought I was going to die. He was older and he was so beautiful, so handsome. Afterwards I was destroyed and I remember I escaped from love for a long time. I used to hear people saying about me, ‘She is an old maid’.

"I loved to hide inside myself this big love affair and nobody would know it. For that reason I am not jealous, because I never think you have to possess somebody. Because at the start I was not loved, I think it is normal that love goes away."

Ardant’s romantic life has not been uneventful. She was Francois Truffaut’s muse until his death in 1984. Truffaut, who fell in love with her the first time he saw her on television, once explained that he was entranced by "her large mouth, her deep voice and its unusual intonations, her big black eyes and her triangular face". The two never married and lived as neighbours in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. Ardant told an interviewer then: "For me love must remain illicit, with no ring on the finger".

By now, she was talking about jealousy.

"When you are jealous everything is strong, because you consider everything in your own point of view. But it is boring for the other. You remember Othello? It is always a bad ending. I see some jealous women and there is always something ridiculous about it."

I asked if her notions about love had changed.

"Non," she said emphatically. "All my thoughts are the same as when I was 15. And I like that. When people say, ‘what is it like to be becoming old?’ it is a burden. But if you don’t change the essential things, alors, it means that suddenly life is short but it belongs to you. Old age and disasters and failure, il fait rien. It doesn’t matter. It is good to be faithful to what you think when you are 15. If you start to betray yourself, that is a real loss. I know that when you are 15 you are a little bit stupid, but it is better to keep this stupidity and to live, to love and to go to the disaster again. Finally when you look back on your life you will say experience doesn’t work. You do exactly the same things. But it’s you.

"I remember when I was 30, I fell down in the street. I suffered a lot and I called my mother, and she said, ‘How old are you?’ I said, ‘I am 30.’ ‘You are 30 and you are still running on the street?!’"

How, I whimpered, would someone romance you?

"It doesn’t come with instructions," the actress said, with the smile of an ingénue.

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