Jacques Rivette has previously made Balzac-themed films: La Belle Noiseuse (loosely based on The Unknown Masterpiece) and of course the recently rediscovered Out 1 (inspired by the History of the Thirteen trilogy). Here, with the help of his regular screenwriter Pascal Bonitzer and two highly idiosyncratic stars in Jeanne Balibar and Guillaume Depardieu, he attempts a more literal adaptation. The source is The Duchesse de Langeais, the middle story of the Thirteen trilogy (Don't Touch the Axe is the translation of its original title), and Rivette claims he was motivated this time by a desire "to be faithful not only to the spirit but also the letter of Balzac's text."

The star-crossed romance opens with Depardieu's wounded war hero finding his long-lost love, Balibar's coquettish socialite, in a Majorcan convent and then flashes back to detail their complicated, tragically out-of-sync courtship, played out in the drawing rooms of Restoration Paris. The supremely confident duchess toys with her stolid suitor with obvious pleasure, reeling him in then rebuffing him, until she goes too far in her humiliations and awakens not just a protective cold-heartedness but a vengeful streak. Naturally once he shuts down she opens up... [The film] is often torrentially talky, but it's far from boring--rarely has a film paid such enraptured attention to the weight and flow of words. Balibar and Depardieu, both excellent, illuminate the minutely shifting dynamics of their characters' tortured pas de deux... The dry playfulness, the dazzling intricacy of the verbal and physical choreography, and the sense of love as a potentially deadly game are all quintessentially Rivette's.--Dennis Lim, Indiewire

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