Claude Sautet's fifth movie with Romy Schneider, seemingly a sort of apology for giving her so small a role in Mado and none at all in Vincent, François, Paul, and the Others, is the by now familiar roundelay: an abortion, separation, a weekend in the country, an afternoon at the beach, a lost job, an attempted suicide, a kitchen spill, a reunion, a sauna bath, a nasty spat, another sojourn in the country, a chamber-music recital, a flat tire in the rain, a motocross race, a successful suicide, a new pregnancy, and all the while enough food and drink to serve an army. The most touching subplot in all this hurly-burly has to do with a prune-faced, middle-aged man who, to save his life, is suddenly no longer capable of holding down a decent job: there's an absolutely radiant supporting performance, as the man's worried wife, by Arlette Bonnard, who, incidentally, is just about the best walking advertisement ever seen on screen for the natural beauty of gray hair. Sautet is doing things here that he knows full well he can do, and is even hiding his serene self-assurance behind a falsely modest title. No one else in movies is doing quite these things, however, and we should still be grateful for them. Where else are you going to see such an achingly human moment as (to select ten seconds out of a hundred minutes) a woman sneaking a peek into the clothes closet of her former husband's current lover? With Bruno Cremer, Claude Brasseur. (1979) — Duncan Shepherd
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