Boy meets girl. They fall in love and decide to hook up — for the rest of their lives. But how can they make sure that the flame never dies? Twentieth-century philosopher couple Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir dug into the problem and came up with a few codes of behavior. 1.) Never get married. 2.) Go out with other people and bring them into the relationship. 3.) Work should always precede passion.
Did this stuff work out for them? Very much so, as history attests and as depicted in the part-love story, part-biopic "Les Amants du Flore."
Sartre and Beauvoir made their way to philosophy's Hall of Fame by founding the hip/cool school of thought known as existentialism. They dared to defy convention, to reject religion, to scoff at family values and spend most of their waking hours in Parisian cafes and clubs. They were also two-packs-a-day smokers (which Sartre supplemented with a pipe that hardly ever left his mouth), guzzled whisky whenever and were great endorsers of the one-night stand. Though all this may seem tame by today's standards, in the ultra-conservative, deeply entrenched Parisian society of the 1930s, the pair raised a whole lot of eyebrows.