Renoir’s close adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s Partie de Campagne is about the sad romantic consequences of a family picnic. Even the menu is Maupassant’s: fried fish, stewed rabbit [fricassee], salad, beer, claret, and coffee. However, Renoir substitutes white wine for the claret. 
Sated and a little drunk, Cyprian Dufour and his daughter Henriette’s fiancé fall into a stupor. But the women remain alert. Slyly, Mrs. Dufour accepts the attention of two young men and their invitation to the Seine. Madame Dufour pairs off with Anatole while Henriette hesitantly sits with Henri. Right off, the mother is willing to be seduced. It’s her birthday, and she celebrates by making love to her boater. Henriette modestly allows Henri’s advances, and in one magical moment, they kiss. But embarrassed, they separate and return.
Renoir’s sensibility keeps the magic of Henriette and Henri’s lost moment of love from becoming cloying.
One year later, Henriette, now unhappily married, returns for another picnic. This time it is unpleasant. She is distracted by her memory of her adventure the year before. And she is appalled by her husband’s vulgar dining and drinking. Wandering when he sleeps on the grass, Henriette suddenly encounters Henri, who has also returned looking for her. Their “accidental” meeting finds them both rueful of their lost opportunity.
*Renoir insists that Partie de Campagne, eventually released in 1946, is incomplete, but it’s among his most thoughtful and polished films. Renoir appears in the role of Monsieur Poulain and his companion Marguerite as the waitress. Their romance is portrayed in Gilles Bourdos’s Renoir (2012).
The Cast: Sylvia Bataille as Henriette; Jacques Brunius Roldophe;
See Jean Renoir. A Day in the Country [Partie de Campagne] (1936/46). Screenplay by Jean Renoir based on Guy De Maupassant’s “A Day in the Country” [“Une Partie de Campagne”]; Guy De Maupassant. Guy De Maupassant, Original Short Stories, Translated By Albert M. C. McMaster, A. E. Henderson, and Others; André Bazin. Jean Renoir Edited by Translated by W.W. Halsey II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973; Raymond Durgnat. Jean Renoir. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1974.