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

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Love fades and hatred settles in, holding firm for a very long time in Pierre Granier-Deferre's grim study of a marriage gone bad. Jean Gabin & Simone Signoret are a married couple whose relationship has outlasted their love for one another. They live in nearly mute misery, staying out of each other's way & exchanging notes as opposed to speaking. Gabin shows more affection, in fact ALL of his affection, toward a stray cat than to his wife. Signoret, a one-time acrobat injured years earlier & now saddled with a permanent limp exacts a terrible revenge on both Gabin and his cat. Granier-Deferre peppers the film with a fair amount of symbolism, but it's never muddy. It's quite clear that the decline of Gabin's and Signoret's relationship coincides with the gentrification of their neighborhood. Their house is the last on the block slated for demolition. An astounding, brilliantly acted movie and a very harsh look at just how nasty one human can be toward another. Philippe Sarde did the haunting music score.

Depressing but mesmerizing, this movie is like a horrible traffic accident - you know it's going to be gruesome, but you can't look away because you MUST know what happened to these people. The acting - in fact the entire film - is typically French, grittily realistic, yet artistically satisfying. No pie-in-the-sky happy ending. People are cruel sons of guns who can't even love without corruption. Deal with it. Simone Signoret's wild eyes as she cuts up her husband's prized newspapers ("Look what you have done, Kitty!") will stick with you for years afterward. I know. I saw it in the theater when it came out. There was a tag line for this film, one of the best I've heard, since it summarizes the plot exactly: "A love-hate relationship so strong it destroyed everything - the man, the woman - even the cat."

doubtless one of the best movies by granier-deferre and the acting is superb. so is the interplay of montage, photography and music. all throughout the running time everything is handled with great care and sophistication. a must-see if you like french drama. but take care: you're going to watch an extremely dark and pessimistic film. there's no light, there's no hope. nowhere.

Elderly couple. Husband has nothing to communicate to his wife any more. Wife still longs for some affection. Only cat gets affection. Wife shoots cat. Husband even more alienated.My wife and I were watching this movie on TV. Our cats were sitting on our laps, happily purring. "A very profound movie about man-cat relationship", I remarked. "Actually it is more about the relationship between humans, or the lack of it", my wife replied. Of course, she was right.