The following might contain spoilers

In the early stages of their acquaintance, Montriveau tells the duchess of one of his exploits. He recounts walking through the desert to exhaustion and stopping, unable to go any further, and then, recalls his guide telling him that their destination is only an hour away. Montriveau gets up and begins walking again, but another excruciating hour passes, and then two, and salvation is nowhere in sight. Again, he wants to stop, and again, the guide promises him that another hour is all it will take to reach their destination. And so, hour after hour, his hope was renewed and the journey was eventually completed.

I think this anecdote is very telling for the way the relationship between the two protagonists plays out, at least up to a point. The matching of the two seems both likely and unlikely. On one hand, he, the hero of the hour, covered in glory and admired by all, and she, the society lady, beloved by the frequenters of Paris’ high society seem destined to be with one another. On the other hand his stern, almost surly demeanor and his earthy passion seem to clash with her vivacity and her etherealness. Soon after they meet, he believes that she will be his mistress, but even though she is drawn to him, the thought of a materialization of any sort of attraction that might exist between them beyond chaste kisses on the hand doesn’t seem occur to her. At least, she won’t allow them to occur. Day after day, her eyes, her gestures seem to promise a completion of their relationship, and day after day he returns to only find nothing more than what he had left the day before.

To me, the character of the duchess is sketched in such way as to never seem completely of this world, as if she exists in a dimension of her own, and only graces those around her with fragments of her being, of her presence, she is partly unknown to them as they are to her. Her actions can seem somewhat theatrical and even artificial, cruel at times, unjustified at others. She goes from what might seem complete selfishness to complete surrender and self sacrifice, she is a woman of the world but is unfamiliar with its mechanisms, she seems as much fragile and naïve as she does unmovable and sophisticated, and she never quite seems real to me, up until the very end of the film, when she is lying, dead, on the floor of that crypt. It’s at that moment only when she finally gains full substance, ironically, at the same time when, as one of the members of Montriveau’s crew says to him, she isn’t anything anymore. I always felt that her actions throughout the film make sense to her and to none other in full measure, not even the audience.

He, on the other hand is, in ways, her opposite. He desires her, loves her even but can’t understand her fully, he becomes obsessed with her. She drives him to the most extreme of gestures and then disarms him completely with her attitude. Eventually, his wounded pride forces him to distance himself from her. When she disappears, he presumably misses her, and when he finds her again, we see his full distress and agitation, and all his efforts to talk to her again. His emotions are never hidden, nor are his intentions. Montriveau never seems to be a mystery to the viewer or to those around him (save, perhaps, for the duchess), and as far as characters go, he is quite straight-forward.

The film is both captivating and difficult to watch, eliciting conflicting reactions which somehow follow the tone of the central relationship through their nature. The viewer is both awed and frustrated, caught in flirtation and wanting to get away. Overall, a very well crafted film, one which I will remember fondly but which I am not sure I will endeavor to watch again.