Something like the twentieth feature film of the nonagenarian Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira, still largely unknown in the U.S. In the circumstances, it would be churlish to say that it's a trifle boring: far better to be bored by a ninety-three-year-old who makes a film to please only himself than by a thirty-three-year-old who makes a film to please teenagers. Plus, it's barely an hour and a half in length, not much time to be bored. The subject of an aging French actor of highest principles -- he has never worked for money or popularity and is not about to start now -- might have seemed sentimental or self-pitying if the director had not so well kept his distance and his dignity. There are several lovely stretches, full of life, full of a sense of passing time: the wordless sequence of the protagonist paying his bill in a Parisian cafe, signing autographs on the sidewalk outside an art gallery, and buying a new pair of brown brogues; the breathless sequence of him getting made up in wig and mustache for the role of Buck Mulligan in a film of Ulysses; the rocky rehearsal of his scene, done as a single-take of the face of its American director (John Malkovich). And Michel Piccoli in the lead role still has savoir-vivre to burn. (2001) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.