The Letter
Synopsis
Mademoiselle de Chartres had a first heart-breaking experience : she has been deserted by fickle young man. One night , a friend of her mother's, Mrs Silva, the wife of the director of the Gulbenkian foundation, introduces her to a widely-reputed doctor, Jacques de cléves. He was smitten by Mademoiselle de Chartres from the moment he first saw both she and her mother choosing a necklace in a famous jewellery store in the palace vendôme. She accepts his marriage proposal, although feeling no passion for him. However, passion wil br stirred, despite her better instincts, by a fashionable singer, Pedro Abrunhosa...
Credits
Director (1)
Actors (13)
Production and distribution (4)
- Co-productions : Wanda Films, Gemini Films
- Foreign production company : Madragoa Filmes
- Film exports/foreign sales : Gemini Films
- French distribution : Gemini Films
Full credits (14)
- Executive Producer : Paulo Branco
- Adaptation : Manoel De Oliveira
- Screenwriter : Manoel De Oliveira
- Director of Photography : Emmanuel Machuel
- Editor : Valérie Loiseleux
- Sound Recordist : Jean-Paul Mugel
- Costume designer : Judy Shrewsbury
- Author of original work : Madame De La Fayette
- Co-producer : Paulo Branco
- Production managers : Philippe Rey, Jacques Arhex, Élisabeth Bocquet
- Press Attaché (film) : Bruno Barde
- Production designers : Ana Vaz Da Silva, Ann Chakraverty
- Casting : Richard Rousseau
- Sound Mixer : Jean-François Auger
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Technical details
- Type : Feature film
- Genres : Fiction
- Sub-genre : Psychological drama
- Production language : French
- Coproducer countries : France, Portugal
- Original French-language productions : Unspecified
Box-office & releases
News & awards
Selections (9)
Istanbul Film Festival
Turkey , 2000
From Literature to the Silver Screen
Awards (1)
About
I immediately foresaw the difficulties involved in setting this story Madame de la fayette's era. At the same time, i thought , given that itis the drama of strong contrsts, if i recreated the conflict, setting it in a society as permissive as ours is today when it comes to love, the dramatic situations would be even deeper. The moral code controlling and thwarting love was anachronistic, and i thought it interesting to accentuare this by making Madame de Cléves' object of passion a pop singer and her confidant a anun who was once childhood friend. I was then overcome by the desire to accompany this sad, intimate story of passion with fragments of a social vision. They would show the disturbances that now rattle, with the same force as cruelties of pas times, this incorrigible world that we live in.
Manoel de Oliveira-Director, excerpt from the press folder.
