Frank Flannagan is an international playboy and business tycoon well acquainted with beautiful women he can wrap around his finger. But there's something different about Ariane, the mysterious woman he encounters in Paris that won't even give him her name. Fate tears them apart only to bring them back together again, until finally they end the movie with an admission of their love, the revelation of Ariane's name, and a new beginning as a wedded couple in New York.
The mystery of their meetings is all very exciting... until the truth is revealed and considered at a distance. Ariane is, first off, not the femme fatale she pretends to be, but a young cello student with no romantic experience. Flannagan is old enough to be her father, and in addition to that, is so ill at ease with the idea of her having a sexual past that he hires a private investigator to dig into her previous relationships. There are none to be found, of course, and the truth is outed to general celebration. But the enormous age gap, the total lack of truth at the center of the relationship's beginning, and the relief with which Flannagan greets the revelation of Ariane's unspoiled girlhood with comes together to form a very uncomfortable whole. Flannagan doesn't really love Ariane as a woman, but as an ornament: beautiful, naive, and without much of a life beyond him.
