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A Man in Love

A Man in Love (Un homme amoureux)

Movie · 1987 · 15 people

Diane Kurys made her first English-language film with A Man in Love (French: Un homme amoureux, Italian: Un uomo innamorato), a 1987 drama co-produced by France, Italy and Britain, with Pathé as the production company. The screenplay is by Kurys, Olivier Schatzky and Israel Horovitz. The characters speak English, French and Italian, and the film runs roughly two hours. It was the opening film of the 1987 Cannes Film Festival before going into cinemas.

The story begins when Steve Elliott (Peter Coyote), a Hollywood star made famous by American films, accepts an offer to appear in an Italian art film shot in Rome. His manager advises against the role out of concern for his career, but the actor has made up his mind. Once shooting starts he soon falls in love with his co-star, the young and beautiful actress Jane Steiner (Greta Scacchi). Jane returns his feelings and moves into his home. But Steve is married, and the relationship that began like a fairy tale is strained by the tangled ties around them.

Jamie Lee Curtis plays Susan Elliott and Claudia Cardinale plays Julia Steiner. The cast also includes Vincent Lindon, Peter Riegert and Jérôme Deschamps.

DirectorDiane Kurys
Production companyPathé

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Cast

Only cast members with a profile on this site are listed.

Claudia Cardinale Claudia Cardinale Actor · died at 87 Vincent Lindon Vincent Lindon Actor · 67 years old Peter Coyote Greta Scacchi Jamie Lee Curtis Peter Riegert Constantin Alexandrov Jean-Claude de Goros Jole Silvani John Berry Jérôme Deschamps Christine Pignet Jean-Marc Roulot Marie-Christine Orry Michèle Guigon

More from this director

Through different eyes

Cinephile Looks at script, editing and directing choices; keeps a distance from formula films.

Being Kurys's first English-language film makes A Man in Love an interesting experiment. The mix of English, French and Italian lets you feel, through language itself, the foreignness of an American star who comes to Rome to make an art film; the multinational production is not a constraint here but part of the story. The film-within-a-film frame also keeps open the question of whether the love begins in a role or in real life. The backbone of the story, though, a married man's on-set affair, leans on a very familiar melodrama pattern, and I don't think the script pushes much against its limits. Opening Cannes raises expectations; the film works better as a study in atmosphere than as the ambitious piece it seems to want to be.

History & Society Lens Asks about the period, the social background and what the work reflects.

In the background of the film lies a tension between two film cultures. The Italian art-film offer that the agent opposes out of concern for his client's career shows, in a small but telling detail, how the Hollywood star system looks at European cinema. The main story, though, is about how an affair outside marriage touches the lives of the people around it. The point of view belongs largely to the man in love; how much room female characters such as his wife Susan or Julia, played by Claudia Cardinale, find in that view is a question viewers may want to ask. That a woman director built this frame makes it all the more thought-provoking.

Family Viewer Asks whether the whole household can watch it; cares about humour and heart.

This is an adult drama about a married man's love affair with a young actress. Given the subject, it is not one to watch with children, and teenagers may not find it very interesting either. Because it puts a heavy theme like fidelity in marriage at its centre, it is best watched by adults on their own. Those curious about how a relationship strains family ties may find it thought-provoking.

These are not reader reviews: they are short editorial takes written from different viewer perspectives with AI assistance. Reader reviews are below.

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