I said his story reminded me of a movie I’d seen recently in which a university professor gets romantically involved with a student who is the same age as his daughter. Around the time his young lover moves in with him the professor’s daughter shows up at his door in the middle of night in tears having just left her boyfriend. The three of them live together for a number of weeks and the two young woman grow close and eventually find themselves bound together by the secrets they know about each other and have promised not to share.
About mid-way through the film there is a scene between the father and the daughter. It’s a long tracking shot as they take a walk in the streets of Paris. In this scene the father explains to his daughter that no one can really know for sure what fidelity is as one can be faithful to something that another person finds meaningless. Later in the film the professor’s expansive view of fidelity is tested when he finds his young lover engaged in an erotic encounter with a stranger. When confronted the young lover pleads that it was just an urge, a desire. It didn’t mean anything. It was just sex. But in the end her sexual adventuring was too much for him and the professor broke off the relationship. In the meantime his daughter rekindled her romance with her ex-boyfriend. At the end of the film the father finds himself alone while his daughter is newly in love again with her ex boyfriend.
He was not familiar with the film but thought it sounded very French. He conceded that his love affair with its frank betrayals did indeed have more in common with a melancholy, French film about relationships rather than, say, an American screwball comedy.