Une Femme Seule
Directed by Mervyn LeRoy
Starring Jean Seberg, Honor Blackman, Sean Garrison
Released January 27th, 1966
Unrated
Mervyn LeRoy described Moment to Moment, one of his last directorial efforts, as “a woman’s picture.” This melodrama from screenwriters John Lee Mahin and Alec Coppel (based on his story Laughs with a Stranger) deals with infidelity and murder while featuring gorgeous locations, stylish wardrobes, and one truly shocking turn of events that recalls (the far superior) Les Diaboliques.
The luminous Jean Seberg plays Kay Stanton, an American living in France with her psychiatrist husband Neil (Arthur Hill) and their young son Timmy (Peter Robbins). This is supposed to be a vacation for the family, but the good doctor is called away on important business, so presently it’s just Kay and Timmy on their own in a foreign country.
One day along the French Riviera, there is a man standing at an easel, doing his best to sketch a medieval tower that’s far off in the distance. Timmy notices that he is a fellow American and strikes up a conversation, saying his mother would be happy to drive him closer to the tower to get a better view. It’s more of a natural occurrence than it sounds. When Timmy’s mother meets this naval ensign named Mark Dominic (Sean Garrison), it’s clear there is a mutual attraction.
Mark comes over to Kay’s house and meets her free-spirited neighbor Daphne (Honor Blackman), who admires Mark as if he was chiseled out of granite. Many of Mark’s sailor pals are in town and they head over to Daphne’s place for a party. With Kay’s husband still away, she and Mark begin to spend a lot of time together. They go to an art museum. They go to the beach. They play a stacking game called Blockhead that you can currently find for sale online for around ten dollars.
After sleeping together, Kay tries to cut it off with Mark. When she says their union was a mistake he immediately turns to alcohol and anger, becoming violent and belligerent. His instability serves as a reminder for Kay that she doesn’t really know this man. After a fast turn of events that I will not spoil here, he winds up dead. It’s not long before the police show up. Inspector DeFargo (Grégoire Aslan) has the whole thing laid out straight away and tells Kay as much. Then her husband returns home.
At this point in the film, you would think we the audience may not be in Kay’s corner. She cheated on her husband with a guy who wound up dead. She should probably face some sort of consequence for that. But the tension comes from our collective wanting of Kay to escape without judgement. Perhaps this is because we would all like to be absolved of our greatest mistakes and continue to live life as if they didn’t happen.
Sporting bright, vibrant colors on fashionable outfits courtesy of Yves Saint Laurent, Jean Seberg and Honor Blackman make for a very watchable duo. Blackman is having a ball playing the footloose and fancy-free Daphne and makes the character come alive with plenty of spunk. Seberg plays Kay’s insecurities well, conveying her sense of isolation no matter how much drama she’s caught up in. It’s also worth noting that her hairstyle is to die for. Moment to Moment contains some plot contrivances that wouldn’t feel out of place on an episode of All My Children, but they are easily forgiven in the midst of this enjoyable pot boiler.
The Kino Lorber special features include a handful of trailers for thrillers, and an audio commentary by film historians Howard S. Berger and Nathaniel Thompson. Their excited commentary sometimes rambles, but their exuberance makes for a fun listen. The pair say the film was marketed at the time as a riff on the filmmaking styles of Alfred Hitchcock and Douglas Sirk, though the film bears little resemblance to the oeuvre of either filmmaker. They discuss Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer’s rather shmaltzy title song, and they detail an interesting (but unrelated to Moment to Moment) story involving Jean Seberg writing a letter defending Mervyn LeRoy after he was dissed by Elliot Gould.