Very well executed

one of my absolute favorites!

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

This story of a French couple, middle class business people leading a life that they only find boring when they encounter a young, free spirited and unisexual man, takes some weird turns but does it with excellent performances and direction. Though the ending was a bit abrupt, as well as shocking, getting there was the fun - well, pleasure, maybe. The young man has an affair with the woman, and is clearly drawn toward the man as while. The husband's reaction is the key to the drama, and the actor's subtle signs of being tempted, against his nature and resisting all the way , are truly fine acting. The whole cast is excellent, and the sensual , open tone of the movie, mixing the fairly straight-laced couple, their young child, middle class friends and family, and the worldly young man and depicting them, ultimately, as not really all that different, is almost comforting...until that ending, which came rather fast and furious after a more slow moving development, shattering the mood. Still, this is a really fine job of direction, and development of characters who all seem far more common than we would think if merely being told about them.

From all the French movies I've seen, this one is quite different. When I say different, I mean that this movie has faster pace compared to other French movie that are usually slow-moving.The events folded seamlessly and the acting of the three main actors were great, with one flaw. Stanislas Merhar was supposed to look normal, not effeminate, according to the script, and according to Miou-Miou's character. However, he still looked very effeminate. I don't know if that was the real him or that was what the director wanted him to be.On the contrary, the ending was not that good. I think it was because the writer wanted to end the story, but didn't know how to end it logically. Anyway, this movie is worth seeing.

The mellow, mesmerising tune of the theme music by Edouard Dubois made me watch this movie twice while on a transcontinental flight. The music was only one reason among others that made me watch the film twice in four hours. I am a French film enthusiast and the contents of the film (latent homosexuality, guilt, cross dressing, etc.)were not out of the ordinary. What was striking in the film was the deliberate, structured screenplay that made me recall early works of Marcel Carne. I was not surprised to learn that the screenplay won an award at the prestigious Venice Film Festival and nominated for a Cesar in France.The film's beginning and end revolve around affirmation of marital bonds, while the bulk of the film (to me only the sub-plot) ventures into transgression of those bonds followed by redemption. There is sadness at the end but it also accompanied by a silent studied reaffirmation of faith between man and wife. The final walk of the duo is an ordinary event yet captured powerfully in this film. I recommend this film to those who have not seen it not as a film that is extraordinary, but one which encourages viewers to introspect and look at ordinary lives, not of superheroes but of less than perfect men and women. The film succeeds because of low-keyed acting (Merhar and Miou-Miou), the sombre yet mesmerising music and good mise-en-scene. The film discusses "drycleaning" of two individuals' marital life, but the script and the director elevate the wife as strong personality with a level-headed strength developed quite unobtrusively as the film progresses. Anne Fontaine, the director, is someone to watch out for in the future as is Edouard Dubois. In more ways than one (direction, cinematography, the script) the film gives a woman's perspective of the story, though a wee bit sombre.

Saw a humongously uninspired French movie, Dry Cleaning (Nettoyage a Sec), that the advertisers swear won Cesar awards all over the place, but is just a hodgepodge of every foreign movie cliche that might strike an upscale audience as profound: a sexually ambiguous stranger insinuates himself into the lives of a married couple, engaging them in sexual games that bring them to the brink of self-destruction. She's desolate without the young man; the husband wrestles with his denial that he's also turned on by the stranger. Of course this is "art theatre," so we are to suppose that every straight man is really a gay man who hasn't found out yet. On the other hand the homosexual aspect of the story becomes the vehicle that carries the husband into his own corner of hell, an idea that seemed arty thirty-odd years ago (The Sergeant; The Children's Hour) but now is just insulting to gays. And of course the story is dotted with major and minor sexual interludes and taunts, but relationships are left to angry, dissatisfying silences between not-particularly-interesting characters. Story elements are offered that suggest the plot could go somewhere else but instead lead nowhere (the young man's sister leaves and conceivably might return looking for him; the young man has genuine talent as a dry-cleaner and might make a life for himself beyond his "drifter" existence; the married couple thinks about moving to Canada). I think the filmmaker has a long way to go in justifying why he wanted to make this movie -- what he thought would make this film extraordinary compared to some other story about dissolving marriage or sexual curiosity. Imagine La Strada if Anthony Quinn just sat around and brooded. If Thomas Mann had written Dry Cleaning it would be called Death in Suburbia: except that, speaking strictly for myself, I think it's the audience that dies.