One Deadly Summer

1984 • 130 minutes

About this movie

Isabelle Adjani plays Elle, a provocative 19-year-old whose move, with her mother and sick father, to a sleepy Provence village sets the locals afire with lust and gossip. She soon finds a suitor in gentle Pin-Pon (Alain Souchon), the local mechanic, and they marry shortly after. Then the tone shifts, when a dark secret emerges from her past, the film becomes more complex and Adjani’s character reveals a disturbing side as she manipulates events and men in order to seek revenge for an outrage inflicted in her childhood… With more César Awards than any other French actor and a host of Oscar® nominations, Adjani (Queen Margot, Camille Claudel) is one of the most celebrated French stars of all time. Her acting talent and staggering sensual beauty both reaching a career-defining high in Jean Becker’s film, which became the highest grossing French film of the year and the prototype for the erotic thrillers which Hollywood made in its wake.