By Jonathan Price
The French are reputed to say, perhaps thinking of Madame Bovary, that “without adultery there is no novel.” And of course adultery, both practical and literary, is not limited to the French. But there is a French setting for this film My Old Lady (2014) about, among other things, adultery. Israel Horowitz, after 18 years, has made a filmed version of his play, and taken it from its apartment confines and entrances and exits out onto the streets of Paris. And his work’s take on adultery is neither romantic nor particularly sympathetic and, in that way, is refreshing without quite being puritanical.
