One of Lubitsch's finest and most underrated films, Design for Living, based on Noel Coward's play, tells of three expatriate Americans in Paris: a struggling painter (Gary Cooper), an undiscovered playwright (Fredric March), and their self-appointed protectress (Miriam Hopkins). They resolve to establish a platonic garret dedicated to the service of art, but the muse soon finds itself hard-pressed with both artists trying to get Miss Hopkins on a dusty couch and finally slipping into a blissful ménage à trois that has the lady switching with casual promiscuity from one man to the other. Truffaut, in Jules and Jim, and Godard in A Woman Is a Woman, both update the story to a narrative moment when the machinations of mortals cannot supply closure. But there is trouble in this paradise too, and Lubitsch brings his cynical fairy tale to a properly amoral conclusion.