''The Woman in Red Boots'' (french: La Femme aux bottes rouges; it, La ragazza con gli stivali rossi; es, La mujer con botas rojas) is a 1974 fantasy

comedy-drama Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...

film co-written and directed by

Juan Luis Buñuel Juan Luis Buñuel (9 November 1934, Paris – 6 December 2017, Paris) was a film and television director, screenwriter, and actor. His films include ''Expulsion of the Devil'' (''Au rendez-vous de la mort joyeuse'', 1973) and ''La Femme aux ...

. The film stars Catherine Deneuve as a beautiful young writer with the power to make her wishes reality whose life becomes entangled with the plots of the wealthy art patron Perrot, played by

Fernando Rey Fernando Casado Arambillet (La Coruña (Spain), 20 September 1917 – Madrid (Spain), 9 March 1994), best known as Fernando Rey, was a Spanish film, theatre, and television actor, who worked in both Europe and the United States. A suave, i ...

. The film is highly surrealistic and tinged with a meta-narrative, with the characters roughly representing divisions of the art world: the raw creative power of young Françoise, the heroine who has nearly unlimited potential; the cynical manipulation and distant intellectualism of the elder Perrot; and the middle-aged Marc ( Adalberto Maria Merli), trapped in the middle and forced to choose.

Plot

Françoise Leroy is a young and beautiful novelist with the extraordinary ability to make her wishes come true. She starts the film in a relationship with Richard, a bohemian painter. Perrot, an older wealthy art lover who is fascinated by the destruction of works, decides to meddle with Françoise and Richard. Perrot causes Françoise and Marc, a publisher, to meet; the two begin trading reality-altering letters, much to the concern of Sophie, Marc's wife. Sophie, while attempting to spy on Marc's hunting trip to understand what is going on with this potential affair, is shot by her husband in an accident, possibly caused by Françoise's unconscious desire for Marc to be available. Perrot invites Françoise to settle in his house to write there, then invites both Marc, Richard, and various other artists as well. Perrot's machinations are tied somewhat to his love of chess which manifests in a three-dimensional chess game he is playing (both in reality and his subjective actions). Perrot arranges the "Death of art" in a mass suicide of the artists, as art requires destruction to be complete in his opinion; Richard and Marc

draw straws Drawing straws is a selection method, or a form of sortition, that is used by a group to choose one member of the group to perform a task after none has volunteered for it. The same practice can be used also to choose one of several volunteers, shou ...

to see who can stay with Françoise. Marc loses; Françoise and Richard escape through one of Richard's paintings that opens up to allow them to physically walk inside to the world within, yet turns back to paint when another person inspects the picture.

Cast

* Catherine Deneuve as Françoise *

as Perrot * Jacques Weber as Richard * Adalberto Maria Merli as Marc *

José Sacristán José María Sacristán Turiégano (born 27 September 1937), better known as José Sacristán, is a Spanish film, theatre, and television actor. At Gijón International Film Festival in 2015, he received the Nacho Martinez Award. At the 60 ...

as Cleber, Perrot's valet * Emma Cohen as Sophie, Marc's wife * Laura Betti as Léonore

References

External links

* * * 1974 films 1974 comedy-drama films 1970s fantasy comedy-drama films 1970s French films 1970s French-language films 1970s Italian films 1970s Spanish films Films about writers French fantasy comedy-drama films French-language Italian films Italian fantasy comedy-drama films Spanish comedy-drama films Spanish fantasy comedy films Spanish fantasy drama films {{1970s-France-film-stub