Winner of the Prix Louis Delluc (French critics' prize) for best film of its year, this stylish romantic melodrama cemented Sautet's international reputation and marked the start of a fruitful creative partnership with screenwriter Jean-Loup Dabadie (Max et les Ferrailleurs, César and Rosalie, Vincent François Paul and the Others) and the actors Michel Piccoli and Romy Schneider. The film begins with the aftermath of a violent car crash along a rural motorway. As the man, Pierre (Piccoli), lies in a semi-conscious stupor amidst the burning wreckage of his MG, his life flashes before his eyes - specifically his complex entanglement with two very different women: his dutiful, long-suffering wife (Léa Massari) and his adoring, free-spirited mistress (Schneider). One scene follows another in fragmented, free-associative fashion, periodically interrupted by images of the accident itself, ingeniously filmed by Sautet with an army of slo-mo cameras in a a manner that recalls the climax of Bonnie and Clyde. Poorly remade in the U.S. as Intersection with Richard Gere and Sharon Stone, accept no substitute for this masterful portrait of a man literally and figuratively caught at life's crossroads.