Private Lives is tellingly subtitled ‘An Intimate Comedy’. The lives in question are those of the young, rich divorcees Elyot and Amanda. In the opening scene, both are newly married to much duller partners — Sybil and Victor respectively — but as chance will have it, the couples are honeymooning in adjacent hotel suites on the French Riviera.
The comic machine is set ticking by the inevitable meeting and renewed attraction between Elyot and Amanda. Consequences unfold in a series of farcical but emotionally chaotic interactions between the four characters. Amanda and Elyot, it turns out, cannot love each other without fighting constantly.
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