(1964; Circle of Love, French) In making the lusty rounds of love, the cycle of seduction, copulation, and deception begins with a young prostitute (Marie Dubois), only a year in Paris, mistaking a soldier, Georges (Claude Giraud), for a boy she'd known in her village; their lovemaking costs him nothing more than a revocation of his Saturday leave from the barracks, after which he jumps the wall to be at a dance with Germaine (Valérie Lagrange), only then to dance with her friend Rose (Anna Karina) - telling her, "I am unbelievably sentimental" - and then steals away with her to an empty courtyard for fondling and more intimate familiarity.

Sunday morning, writing a letter to Georges with her master and mistress away, Rose the chambermaid hears their son Alfred (Jean-Claude Brialy), studying for his exams, summoning her by ringing his bell for trivial favors; each time she appears he acts silly around her, eventually unbuttoning her blouse ("Do you at least love me a little?" she asks) and ignoring his professor's ringing at the door.

Alfred rents rooms for a tryst with Sophie (Jane Fonda), a married woman with a little daughter, whom he's invited for a visit after having only known her in church and at the ice palace; she says she can stay but briefly before going to see her ailing sister, yet allows him to bed her and tell her of Stendhal's story of a cavalry officer who wept, overjoyed during the days spent with an exceptional lover.

Back home in conjugal comfort with her fastidious husband of five years, Henri (Maurice Ronet), Sophie, now curious about the women he'd known, pesters him to tell her of his carnal conquests before their marriage. Referring to marriage as "a sacred thing," he vaguely speaks of prostitutes as women suffering "moral misery" for the little pleasure they receive, declining to say further other than that a girl he once knew had died. As for pleasure, Henri cautions his wife, it is but "the dessert" of a serious life; she murmurs: "I love the dessert."

To a private lounge in a hotel, Henri brings a 19-year-old girl (Catherine Spaak) off the street for a fling, afterward giving her instructions for conduct on the streets of Paris. She ignores his warnings about other men approaching her, accepting an invitation to the home of a famous playwright (Bernard Noël) who convinces "my pussycat" to remove her clothes to audition for a part in one of his plays.

At Maxim's following the premiere of his new stage play (the disappointed girl was with another man watching the performance), the playwright and his favorite actress, Maximiliene de Poussy (Francine Bergé), who have been lovers off and on for seven years, reunite and discuss their lovers. "I forgot that your charm is famous in Paris," she says: "It should practically be a tourist attraction." Reminiscing of their first encounter, he compares himself to Christopher Columbus discovering America.

In her boudoir Maximiliene awakes to find a handsome young count (Jean Sorel) waiting to speak with her, explaining that his Hungarian companion, Count Zaki, has a delicate diplomatic mission following the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne. After a bacchanal night, the count wakes in the bed of the prostitute at the beginning of the merry-go-round.

Director Roger Vadim with screenwriter Jean Anouilh remade in color (and with Fonda's sex-kittenish flesh) Max Ophul's classic comedy from 1950, adapted from Arthur Schnitzler's play Reigen.

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