Purely Joyful Movie!

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

This movie is the second directed by Bouchitey, after "Lune froide" (Cold moon, 1991). This new one seems to be more "polite", less cynical and sick than the previous one. "Seems", because, after a (slightly slow and too easy to predict) first part based on the life of a university teacher and notorious literature critic, the movie turns out to be the story of the madness of a man, and the sick relationship between him and his student/prisoner.The movie focus on the behaviour and psychology of the main character, played by Bouchitey. How, from a frustrated writer, he becomes a maniac, then how, from a cold psychotic, he unveils the cracks of his soul.Both main character, Bouchitey and the young Laetitia Chardonnet, are interesting, moving and deep.If one shall find the end of the movie a little bit "quick", and the whole plot too predictable, this movie remains a good thriller and a good portrait of an ambiguous maniac/victim relationship.