To me, this movie is perfection.

Best movie ever!

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Updates the 1950 masterpiece to Paris in 1914, shot in rich colour with evocative music, dance and song. A witty script from Jean Anouilh travels through the emotions lightly and, this being France, has slightly weightier moments of literature and philosophy. Since the men are close to being caricature lovers from a sex farce, which some of the time this is, the film belongs to the women. And what a wonderful collection of beautiful, sexy, so often poignant women! Top billing probably has to go to a gorgeous Jane Fonda, then the lover of the director and later his wife, as a young bourgeois wife. But several others play her close: Anna Karina as the housemaid Rose, Catherine Spaak as the mystery girl, Francine Bergé as the actress Maximilienne, and Marie Dubois as the soft-hearted Breton tart. All good roles, taken with gusto and a joy to watch.

There are a few moments in this film that transport you almost bodily back to Arthur Schnitzler's play REIGEN; the first is a long shot of Anna Karina sitting, lonely and abandoned, in a crowded dance-hall while her soldier boyfriend (Claude Giraud) makes time with other women. The unspoken pain that Karina radiates in this scene is palpable (it's also yet another reminder that she was often the only good thing about several films directed by her then-husband, Jean-Luc Godard).More laurels to Jane Fonda, who is wickedly funny as a cheating wife whose fear of getting caught far surpasses any moral qualms she may have about committing adultery. The scenes with her twit of a boyfriend (Jean-Claude Brialy) and her pompous hypocrite of a husband (Maurice Ronet) genuinely sparkle.Alas, the rest of the film is mostly middlebrow ooo-lah-lah; pretty sets and costumes, lovely photography by Henri Decae, and a great title sequence by Maurice Binder. The actors are all certainly competent and then some, but few of their performances really score. And the film as a whole has neither the savage aim of Schnitzler's original play or the gentler wit of Max Ophul's 1950 film of the material. I suppose it gave audiences a few naughty frissons back in the mid-60's, but not enough real entertainment . . .

I too saw the dubbed version when it was playing at the Apollo, a theater on 42nd Street that showed European films that had very limited release. La Ronde or Circle of Love is a visually beautiful film and the scene where Fonda, as the wife, goes to meet her lover in his apartment which has a bird in a cage and Fonda is wearing a hat with a large bird on it is still etched on my memory! Years later I got a VHS of the French version which is a real treasure. Now it is officially out on DVD in Vadim's French version. The cast is a who's who of the 60s French cinema, as was the Ophuls film was (with Signoret, Simone, Daniel Gelan, et al). Chain of Desire is a contemporary remake, and I just saw a play in Chicago by Joe DiPietro with all male cast playing gay characters called F**king Men, really inspired by rather than a re-do. There was an offBroadway production in the late 50's and the actress/director played all the women's parts!

The version I saw was dubbed which didn't help matters any. Not Vadim's best stuff, but the women are beautiful. Anna Karina is touching and naive, a young Jane Fonda is gorgeous and amusing, and many others. Francoise Dorleac was supposed to have a small part in this, but I didn't see her. Vadim did much better work with Brigitte Bardot.A 3 out of 10. Best performance = Jane Fonda. She was never lovelier than this time period. The men are all buffoons or chauvinist pigs, but the girls make it barely watchable. As I said, the original, in French, may be more enjoyable. Jane Fonda has her "own" voice, but she may be the only one in the dubbed version.