La Lettre (The Letter). 1999. Portugal/France. Directed by Manoel de Oliveira. Screenplay by De Oliveira, based on The Princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette. With Chiara Mastroianni, Pedro Abrunhosa. In French, Portuguese; English subtitles. 107 min.
In Manoel de Oliveira’s clever riff on Mme. de Lafayette’s The Princess of Cleves, that most modern of 17th-century novels, Chiara Mastroianni is the new bride who spells her husband’s doom when she falls for a pop singer. “She’s a woman who has to be true to her idea of herself, but she’s a strange woman,” Mastroianni would later observe. “I think that she’s more faithful to her mother’s dying wish that she be true to her husband than she is to the husband. The relationship is stronger with the mother.” She recalled working with the nonagenarian Portuguese filmmaker, who had also collaborated with her father Marcello Mastroianni and her mother Catherine Deneuve: “I knew that Manoel was going to make something so personal that I didn’t have to read the book. He’s a sphinx: He doesn’t tell you anything, but he watches the way you turn a doorknob. I would say, my God, but why? ‘Why’ is the wrong question with Manoel. Never, never ask him why.”