Entre nous ("Between Us"; also known as Coup de foudre "Love at First Sight") is a 1983 French film directed by Diane Kurys, starring Isabelle Huppert, Miou-Miou, Guy Marchand and Jean-Pierre Bacri.
Lena (Huppert), a Jewish woman, marries Michel (Marchand) during World War II, to avoid being deported to Germany. At the same time, Madeleine (Miou-Miou) marries Raymond, a member of the Resistance. Shortly after the wedding, Raymond is killed in a skirmish with the Germans. After a couple of years of widowhood, Madeleine marries Costa (Bacri). In 1952, Lena and Madeleine both live in Lyon. They meet and become friends.
Entre nous provides examples of:
- Ambiguously Bi: Both Lena and Madeleine express interest in men. After her marriage, Lena asks Michel to come into her bed. She also lets a soldier make out with her in the train. Madeleine is really in love with Raymond, her first husband. At the same time, they are strongly implied to have a lesbian relationship.
- Based on a True Story: The story is based on the life of the parents of Diane Kurys, the director.
- Citizenship Marriage: Lena, who is a Jewish foreigner, marries Michel, because he is a French soldier and he is allowed to take his wife out of the detention centre.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Raymond hugs and kisses Madeleine when he is shot in the back and dies.
- Distant Prologue: The prologue is set in 1942, 10 years before the bulk of the film.
- Eiffel Tower Effect: The Eiffel Tower can be seen through the window during the fashion show.
- Forceful Kiss: After catching Madeleine having sex with her art teacher in his bedroom, Michel, who had tried to pick her up previously, forces Madeleine to kiss him.
- Hide Your Lesbians: Lena and Madeleine are very close friend. In the end, they both break up with their respective husband to live together. They also sleep in the same bed in a hotel in Paris. Michel accuses his wife of being a lesbian. However, there is no explicit love confession or love scene.
- Housewife: Lena and Madeleine are housewives, but they aspire to something else. They would like to open a clothing store.
- Interrupted Intimacy: Michel interrupts Madeleine while she is having sex with her art teacher in Michel and Lena's bedroom.
- Last Kiss: Raymond hugs and kisses Madeleine when he is shot in the back and dies.
- Little Black Dress: Madeleine lends such a dress to Lena, but Michel does not want Lena to wear it.
- The Lost Lenore: Madeleine's first husband, Raymond, dies in the prologue. Years later, after she married another man, she still carries Raymond's photograph in her wallet.
- Lousy Lovers Are Losers: Lena's husband Michel is a boorish man who never once gave her an orgasm while she was with him, and thus is seen as a Sympathetic Adulterer when she has an affair and leaves him.
- Love Dodecahedron: Lena is married with Michel. She is strongly implied to have a relationship with Madeleine. She also makes out with a soldier in the train. Michel tries to pick up Madeleine. Madeleine is married with Costa. She has sex with her art teacher.
- Men Are Uncultured: Lena complains that Michel, her husband, is only interested in football and politics and that he is ignorant in other fields.
- Pool Scene: Lena and Madeleine go together to the swimming pool. There is some Fanservice in this scene: Lena is topless when she chats with Madeleine in the changing-room.
- La Résistance: Madeleine's first husband, Raymond, and her art teacher are members of the Resistance.
- Run for the Border: Lena and Michel have to run for the Italian border when the Germans cross the Demarcation line, because they are Jewish.
- School Play: Lena and Madeleine meet during a school play. Madeleine's son is disguised as an Indian. One of Lena's daughters imitates Maurice Chevalier.
- Shoutout:
- Lena reads Les Thibault by Roger Martin du Gard.
- Costa plays Victor Hugo's Ruy Blas.
- Show Within a Show:
- The School Play.
- Costa's one-man-show, where he is dressed as a waiter.
- In the end, Michel is looking for Costa and he arrives backstage at a theatre where Costa plays Victor Hugo's Ruy Blas.
- Slut-Shaming: Michel does not want Lena to wear a black revealing dress. He tells her that she looks like a whore.
- Small Town Boredom: Lena and Madeleine get bored in Lyon. Madeleine finally breaks up with her husband and goes to Paris. In the end, Lena and Madeleine settle down together in Paris.
- Starving Artist: Madeleine is a visual artist, but she cannot live on this activity. Costa is an actor, but resorts to shady business to make a living.
- Sympathetic Adulterer: Lena and Madeleine's affairs (with a soldier, with an art teacher, and with each other) are justified: they get bored, Lena's husband is domineering and sometimes violent, he tries to pick up Madeleine, he is bad at sex (Lena has her first orgasm with a soldier in a train), Lena's marriage was a Citizenship Marriage, Madeleine's husband is an incompetent crook.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: Madeleine and Costa's son gets sick in the car, so Costa has to stop and the boy vomits, but this is only showed in the distance, from Lena and Michel's car which drives away.
- Wartime Wedding:
- Lena has less than one minute to decide if she wants to marry Michel or not to get out of a detention centre. They marry in the detention camp.
- During Madeleine and Raymond's wedding ceremony, someone announces that the Germans have just crossed the Demarcation line.
