A man’s fatal obsession with legs leads to a funeral attended only by women.
In short: In François Truffaut’s 1977 comedy-drama, Bertrand Morane is a man driven by a singular, relentless passion: pursuing women. His life is a series of conquests, memoirs, and near-misses, culminating in a bizarre, tragic end that leaves his former lovers to contemplate the man who sought happiness in sheer quantity.
Directed by François Truffaut, The Man Who Loved Women follows the life of Bertrand Morane, an engineer who spends his days testing aircraft models and his spare time chasing women. After a series of encounters—ranging from a woman he tracks down by faking a car accident to an emotionally unstable lover who ends up imprisoned—Bertrand decides to document his experiences in a memoir. This writing process forces him to confront his past, including a cold relationship with his mother and the lingering influence of an old flame named Véra.
The film’s narrative is framed by Bertrand’s death in December 1976, when he lunges at a nurse’s legs while hospitalized, falls from his bed, and dies. At his funeral in Montpellier, his former lover Geneviève Bigey observes that the attendees are exclusively women. She concludes that while Bertrand was a man of many relationships, he was ultimately a person who failed to find happiness in a single partner, instead attempting to fill that void through the sheer volume of his romantic pursuits.
Critical reception of the film has been divided. Upon its 1977 release, Vincent Canby of The New York Times praised its sophisticated, humane approach to man-woman routines. Conversely, later critics like Geoff Andrew dismissed it as charmless and overly reliant on literary paradox, while others, such as Melissa E. Biggs, argued the film captured a specific moment when sexual obsession could be treated with irony. Despite these conflicting perspectives, the film remains a notable entry in Truffaut’s body of work, which he famously scripted during his downtime while filming Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
The film’s legacy includes a 1983 American remake directed by Blake Edwards, starring Burt Reynolds and Julie Andrews. While the original French production recorded 955,262 admissions in its home country, it continues to spark debate regarding its tone and characterization. Whether viewed as an ironic celebration of obsession or a superficial exercise, the film remains a complex study of a man who, in his own way, loved women.
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