In the mythology of French cinema, Anouk Aimée was often identified with her role in one of the more dubious Cannes Palme d’Or winners: Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman (Un homme et une femme, 1966). Whether swooning sensuously or blinking pensively behind the upturned collar of her sheepskin coat, Aimée’s Anne Gauthier, a role that won her a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination, became an international 1960s embodiment of the sophisticated romantic woman whose often absent gaze says she knows something – about love, about life – that we don’t. A key moment comes when Jean-Louis Trintignant asks if she is married, and Anne replies with a knowing, ambivalent “Mm hm…” You can bet this helped crystallise the English-speaking world’s assumptions about Euro-sexuality….
