In its way, Resnais' adaptation of an enjoyably trashy melodrama by Henri Bernstein is as daring and ineffable a work as Last Year at Marienbad. Bernstein, the dean of the so-called "boulevard drama" in the twenties, was noted by critics for his unusual adaptation of movie techniques to the stage; Resnais triumphs precisely by bringing the pleasures of the theater to film. But his is an extraordinarily lithe, almost dreamy theatricality which offsets the weight of the narrative-a doomed ménage à trois-bringing to the fore, under a painted sky in an unreal world, the musical structure Resnais found fascinating in the playwright's work. In 1926, Romaine Belcroix (Sabine Azéma, after Louise Brooks), the suburban wife of a second-string pianist, Pierre (Pierre Arditi), falls carelessly in love with Pierre's best friend, the virtuoso violinist Marcel (André Dussollier). The casual affair turns thick with passion while Pierre withers, tended by his cousin Christiane (the ardent Fanny Ardant). Aided by extraordinarily nuanced performances, in particular by Azéma and Ardant, Resnais mysteriously succeeds in utterly engrossing the viewer; we become lost in the time and space of a mélo (not mellow) drama.