Le Plaisir

A trilogy of Guy de Maupassant stories, two short simple ones framing a long and impossibly rich one, and I don't know why everyone complains about the framing ones - everything is given exactly the weight that their narrative will support. An old man dressing up like a young dandy to relive the gavotting excesses of his youth, only to end in physical collapse, starts things off; and to close we have a beautiful young couple who go from romantic bliss to petty vindictiveness to resigned acceptance via an attempted suicide. This gives us a rather complex understanding of the meaning of 'pleasure', and the worst you can say is that one and three don't utterly embody pleasure the way number two does (although the swirling camera work in the dance scene comes damn close). The story of a troop of sex workers romping off to a country wedding is simplicity itself, but also incredibly rich - full of memorable human beings and interactions. Everyone sees happiness in the place that they're not, but this episode celebrates life wherever it finds it, and it's a joy to watch.