All the stage is a screen, and vice versa, for Rivette. “For me,” he has said, “the theater is much more a subject for films, as a metaphor (for games) and a meeting place for actors which allows for interaction.” In Love on the Ground, two stage actresses, Charlotte (Geraldine Chaplin) and Emily (Jane Birkin), are lured by hunger and curiosity (curiouser and curiouser) to the château of a playwright, Clément (Jean-Pierre Kalfon). They are meant to work out a scenario involving a love triangle, but it becomes the real-life love triangle it always was. Rehearsal is performance in this house of wonders that is much like the “house of fiction” of Céline and Julie: Charlotte and Emily (after the Brontë sisters) will experience clairvoyance and premonition, self-reflection and ghoulish romance. French film perennial Laszlo Szabo as Clément's butler Virgil is more than a walk-on—in fact he may be the true master of ceremonies.
—Judy Bloch