Love Play (1961) User Reviews

delicious Jean Seberg

[happytrigger-64-390517 · 5/10 · 11 April 2017]

"La Récréation" directed by François Moreuil can be classified as "nouvelle vague", Jean Seberg had just played in "A bout de soufflé" (in which François Moreuil even appeared as a journalist). Some scenes are very similar, though the story is completely different. "La Récréation" is a story of seduction that cannot last. Jean Seberg is absolutely delicious and sexy all through the movie, until one strong sequence in which she becomes darkly frightening. Lot of sequences are nicely shot.

It is very strange to see that "La Récréation" was helped in production by Christian Stengel whose last work was "Vacances explosives" in 1957. Christian Stengel worked with the most popular french actors (Jules Berry, Arletty, Raymond Bussières, Noël Noël, Blanchette Brunoy, ...) since 1937 and was director of Pathé in 1940-45. Maybe it was a last need to work on a different movie, especially with so delicious Jean Seberg.

Low budget follow-up to Breathless, for Seberg fans only.

[barnowl · 6 August 1999]

Jean Seberg, after bombing in Otto Preminger's St. Joan, had her greatest success playing an American in Paris in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless. In the same year (after, not before, Breathless) she was directed by her husband, Francois Moreuil, in this film (La Recreation, aka Love Play, aka Playtime). Again she plays an American abroad, but this time an innocent one (a boarding school student), who is attracted to a next-door sculpture. He and his mistress are painted as decadent, and he has committed a hit-and-run. The affair ends in crashing disillusionment for the Seberg character. My copy was very streaky, as most probably are. I am borrowing some here from "Played Out, the Jean Seberg Story" by David Richards (1981, out of print). The film is very dated - I would recommended it only to Jean Seberg fans.