She has the smile. That’s the first thing to note about Sex Education’s Patricia Allison as Kath, whose enigmatic expression matches that of a goddess’s statue and leaves close friends Jules and Jim entranced. In François Truffaut’s film of Henri-Pierre Roché’s novel, that smile – deemed “innocent and cruel” by the narrator – was worn by Jeanne Moreau whose fragile femme fatale remained disconcertingly unfathomable.
Timberlake Wertenbaker’s adaptation, staged by Jermyn Street’s new artistic director Stella Powell-Jones, gives greater thought to the woman caught in the gaze of the novelist, the auteur and their title characters. As the trio alternately deepen and loosen their romances with each other, Wertenbaker keeps a compassionate curiosity about their individual behaviour but holds them to account, too. There is a heightened awareness of how easy it is to find yourself in love yet how difficult it is to nurture through the years.
