An aristocrat releases four human guinea pigs into a sinister Garden of Eden to cause them to consider the question of whether man or woman is more faithful.

For the 2013 adaptation, editor for The New York Times Sylviane Gold wrote: "La Dispute opens with Prince and Hermiane, as a pair of exquisitely bewigged, bejeweled aristocrats, discussing with typical Marivaux finesse a lover’s question, one that would appear to have no answer.

But since we’re in Enlightenment France, there’s an app for that: the Prince tells his lady that when the same debate arose in his father’s court nearly 20 years earlier, a scientific experiment was devised to provide incontrovertible evidence as to who started the war between the sexes.

There, each was raised, and taught French, naturally, in total isolation by two faithful old servants, Mesrou and Carise.

They will observe unseen as the now adolescent children, simply dressed in pure white, are released into one another’s company for the very first time, blank slates who will discover, or perhaps invent, love, sex and jealousy for themselves.