A Game for Six Lovers (Blu-ray)

One of the founders of the epochal film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, and therefore a prime mover of the French New Wave, Doniol-Valcroze joined all the upstart critics making films in the late ‘50s-early 60s with this decadent debut, a cynical drama about upper-class indolence and betrayal. The game-players in question, arriving at a spectacular villa for the reading of a matriarch’s will, include guileless city girl Milena (Françoise Brion), her lawyer ex-boyfriend Miguel (Gérard Barray), and her long-unseen cousins, Fifine (Alexandra Stewart) and Jean-Paul (Jacques Riberolles) – except Jean-Paul is actually Fifine’s boyfriend Robert, passing himself off as a member of the family. The couple maintains an open “arrangement,” and so the gathering becomes a round of duplicity, swapped partners, and heartbreak.