Wonderful character development!

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

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.

If your attention-span is severely traumatized by Police Academy then best give this one a miss. Keeping track of all the separate threads is like keeping track of individual strands of spaghetti after it's doused in sauce. On the other hand if you make the effort you may decide it's worth it. In one sense it revolves around Camille (Jeanne Balibar) a French actress back on French soil for the first time in three years via a European tour of Pirandello's As You Desire Me. Camille is, in fact, the first thing we see as a pin-spot picks her out of the darkness reinforcing the theatrical quality we are in for. Ostensibly an item with Ugo (Sergio Castellitto) the director of the play and leading actor opposite her, Camille has it in mind to look up her ex-lover, a Professor of Philosophy who, in the interim has married and become a devoted husband. Neither is Ugo as open as he might be about his quest for a lost manuscript by Goldoni and the young girl Dominique who is 'helping' him in this quest. The plot thickens when we learn that Dominique's brother, Arthur, is not only enamored of the Professor's wife but has eyes also for an expensive ring she wears. Rivette and his two screenwriters - both, incidentally, actors themselves - keep the balls spinning and throw in a series of set-pieces as well as ringing the changes on duets, trios and quartets a la opera bouffe and all is resolved a la Shakespeare when le tout ensemble come together in the empty theater and dance off into the night as a haunting lyric performed by Peggy Lee implies that this is not the end of anything. Jeanne Balibar is the main attraction, Castellitto, so warm in Mostly Martha, turns down the heat on his natural charm but still turns in a solid performance. At two and a half hours it's clearly not for everyone but if you're one of those it IS for then this is for you (and let's face it, could Pirandello himself have put it better).

This is the sort of crap film that gave foreign films in the US a bad reputation: Excessive intellectuality, shortage of action, repetition of themes ad nauseam, interminable navel-gazing, etc. For a high-school student's project, this would be acceptable, but for a professional filmmaker, it is a total disappointment. Since all the viewer can do is stare at endless, static presentations of the same actors, it might at least be fun if they were highly attractive. Alas, they are not. Jeanne Balibar is moderately attractive, as is Bruno Todeschini. (Balibar does take her shirt off at one point, but her tits are hardly something to get excited over). The rest of the cast would better be unseen. Let me emphasize that this piece of tedium is 2.5 HOURS LONG. There's barely enough material here for 60 minutes worth of movie.

I caught this film on HBO West on a snow day here on the US East Coast, and found that after the first half hour, I started understanding the French dialogue without the subtitles, because the actors kept repeating OVER AND OVER AND OVER! And, as anyone can tell, I do not speak French, although I have some French Foreign Legionnaire in my unpruned family tree. But, I digress. Initially, I thought the film resembled the Spanish style, with the multiplicity of female characters and emasculated men, mais no! It is French, through and through.While traveling through Maryland a few years back, I heard a radio station jingle that said: Just because it's old doesn't mean its a classic! Substitute "French" for "old", and there you have my review in a nutshell.

After watching this film I had to wonder one thing. Why was this over two and half hours long? A very simple and pedestrian story of a few relationships between a group of adults. Nothing out of the ordinary or unique about the story and it's woefully too long! I did like all the actors especially Jeanne Balibar who is the central character but I would like them even more in a more interesting film and the main problem comes from the fact that the script doesn't really let viewers know who these characters really are and instead the focus is just on their immediate problems. This had the real potential of being something really interesting but unfortunately the story doesn't allow for some needed details.