She’s in her 30s. She’s smart, savvy – and perhaps a little too proud of her critical abilities. She’s an atheist, and when she enters a church and sees the confessionals, what she thinks of isn’t faith or confession, she thinks of how she can challenge the curates. So she talks to the young, sexy priest, seeing if she can shake his faith – and the conversation that develops with them, over several meetings, is as much about belief and ethics as it is an extended flirtation. She is drawn to him, and while he doesn’t say so, his actions suggest that the attraction isn’t one-sided. What exactly is he trying to convert her to – and what is she trying to convert him to? And where can this ongoing, and increasingly erotic, duel of wits lead?

The young woman is Barny (played by Emmanuelle Riva, icon of French arthouse cinema), and the sexy priest (Jean-Paul Belmondo, just one year after Breathless) is the title character Léon Morin. But even considering how much of a cliché the constellation is – a sexy priest, an attractive young woman -, it is difficult not to think of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s modern classic Fleabag.

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