What Every Frenchwoman Wants (1986): The Film That Shocked Europe’s Cinema

In 1986, a French-Italian film arrived in European theaters carrying a secret its own source material had hidden for seventy-five years. What Every Frenchwoman Wants — known in France as Les Exploits d'un jeune Don Juan — was not simply a period European comedy. It was the screen adaptation of a buried novel written by Guillaume Apollinaire, one of the most influential poets in the history of French literature, who denied its existence until his dying day. Behind the camera stood Gianfranco Mingozzi — a Bologna-born director who had trained as a direct assistant to Federico Fellini, and whose decision to set the story in the summer of 1914 transformed a forgotten erotic novel into something far more layered: a quiet elegy for a world standing unknowingly on the edge of the First World War. In front of the camera stood Claudine Auger — the first French actress ever cast as a Bond woman, opposite Sean Connery in Thunderball (1965) — now taking the most unexpected role of her career. Alongside her: Italian screen icon Serena Grandi, veteran French actress Marina Vlady, and in one of her earliest screen appearances, a child actress named Virginie Ledoyen, who would go on to become one of French cinema's most celebrated talents. The screenplay came from Jean-Claude Carrière, the collaborator behind some of Luis Buñuel's most enduring films. The score was composed by Nicola Piovani, who would later win the Academy Award for Life is Beautiful. This is the full, untold story of how a suppressed literary work from 1911, a Fellini-trained director, a Bond actress at a crossroads, and the last summer before the Western Front came together to create one of European cinema's most quietly underestimated films. What did you know about this film before today? Let us know in the comments below. ▶ Subscribe for weekly deep dives into the untold stories behind retro cinema's most remarkable films and the icons who defined the golden age of European and Hollywood filmmaking. 👍 L