Still Storm

In 1832, decades after the French aristocracy fled the Revolution and Terror, beauteous Flora de Margelasse returns to Aquitaine province from exile in England to take possession of the ancestral estate. The lawyer-notary who has always adored her tells this melancholy tale from the distance of old age, unassuaged love and undiminished pain. Flora cannot return his love because she has bestowed her own on the poet-peasant Gildas Caussinade, already lionized in Paris, praised by Musset and Sand. He, poor fool, has fallen helplessly into the coils of Flora's maidservant, the seductress Martha. Who could have know that the fateful triangle would come to great grief: Flora and Gildas, about to marry, are astoundingly foiled by Martha's announcement that the darling of the salons is already married, to her. Reason enough for Gildas to slaughter himself and for Flora, like other romantic heroines, to go mad and soon after die of it. In the tradition of costume meldodramas, Sagan's characters strike attitudes and deliver stock speeches, clutch their bosoms and sigh deeply. The author does nothing to venture beyond this overworked genre. (April 4)