Nominated for an Academy Award, Claude Sautet's A Simple Story (Une Histoire Simple) examines the behavior of its characters as dictated by their environment. Romy Schneider plays Marie, a fortysomething working woman whose tiresome existence has prompted her to inaugurate an affair. Marie eventually parts with her lover, aborting the pregnancy resulting from her liaison. She pauses long enough to take stock of her current situation, and to muse on its possible outcome. Though exuding star quality throughout, Romy Schneider is thoroughly believable as the essentially ordinary, nonspectacular heroine. Her behavior is not that of a wealthy play-actress but a genuine bourgeois woman emotionally hemmed in by her social strata.