Several internationally known directors contributed to this generally adept and compelling series of five brief vignettes on love and its many ramifications.
François Truffaut starts things off with a story of innocent love between a young man in his mid-teens and a slightly older woman. Renzo Rossellini continues in sketch two about a tough mistress who keeps her lover on a short tether. Shintaro Ishihara renders the only violent episode -- that of a disturbed young worker who becomes a real lady-killer.
Marcel Ophüls (son of the late and great
Max Ophüls) directs an upbeat tale about a journalist who accepts the responsibilities of marriage and fatherhood when a brief fling with a woman ends in a pregnancy. The last vignette, directed by the well-known Polish helmer
Andrzej Wajda, is about a brave act by a young soldier whose deed gains him the admiration of a woman, but the response from other men his age is something different. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide