Claude Castaing

This movie is a Marcel Aymé adaptation and it deals with the not-so-glorious side of the Occupation: black market, war profiteers, cracking open bottles of Champagne while most of the Parisians are almost starving.

At the end of the 19th century, during a ball in Joinville, on the outskirts of Paris, Georges, a former delinquent working as a carpenter, meets Marie, a young woman connected to a criminal gang.

An aimless young man is committed to a psychiatric hospital by his father in an attempt to cure him of his delinquent tendencies.

The residents of the apartment building on Rue Montmartre are a motley crew of oddballs and eccentrics. The daring son of a professor couple is in love with a sexy student who supplements her pocket money by working as an au pair. And then there's Monsieur Calomel, the crazy but helpful neighbor who's always ready with a funny face...

Martial, Colette 's husband, is madly jealous. One day, he catches his wife writing a letter and he does want to know what this message contains, to no avail.

The directors of a company threatened by a railroad construction project in Africa decide to have the General Secretary of the Franco-African consortium killed. Géo Paquet, known as "Le Gorille", a DST spy, attempts to infiltrate the gang.

Robert Langlois is now married to Catherine, the former housemaid. And they would live happily ever after if the housing crisis did not force them to live together with Gabrielle and Fernand, Robert's parents. For, despite the good will on either side, tension soon arises. What else to expect when there is too little space in their Montmartre apartment for four people (then for six then eight, the couple having... two pairs of twins!) ; the continued presence there of Fernand (who loves peace and quiet) after he is driven to retirement ; the difficult beginnings of Robert as a lawyer in a room of the apartment, etc... Other troubles follow and the harried family is on the verge of implosion...

The short stories of Guy de Maupassant enjoyed a renaissance in the early 1950s, thanks in great part to the Max Ophuls production Le Plaisir. In Trois Femmes, three De Maupassant stories are dramatized, each conveying the central theme of women falling in love. In the first, a black female carnival entertainer causes an uproar when she falls in love with a white soldier. In the second, a young bride is pressured into having a baby to collect a huge inheritance. And in the final episode, a pregnant girl is "adopted" and protected by a small circle of friends. In standard De Maupassant fashion, each of the three stories in Trois Femmes is capped by a surprise twist.