Un si bel orage (1995)

A French television adaptation of a classic historical novel by Pierre Moustiers, Un si bel orage (1995) is a stormy, sensual fable about young lovers consumed by their passions. Laure Marsac stars as Claire de Tallert, the beautiful eighteenth-century heroine whose indecision over the dashing Antoine de Cherchery (Jean-Philippe Écoffey) and Reanaud de Saint-Pons (Christopher Thompson) drives her to a point of near suicide. Moustiers’s drama is an overripe tale full of heaving bosoms and fatalistic pronouncements, and director Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe delivers on both counts. Marsac lends the bosom in a fireside scene that’s well worth revisiting.