Bernard Barthélémy (Gérard Depardieu) is the director of a car company. He lives a very comfortable life married to his beautiful wife Florence (Carole Bouquet), and then the plain, plump Colette (Josiane Balasko) becomes a secretary in his firm and he's lost. This is not young love, it's mature love and it's passionate without being over the top or in any way superficial.
Hilary Mantel gave a negative review of this in The Spectator in 2019, but then...Hilary Mantel? The Spectator? Say no more. Far more interesting is the late highly esteemed American critic Robert Ebert on this film and French films in general: 'Somebody was asking the other day what the difference was between French and American films. American films are about plots, I said, and French films are about people. You can usually tell where a plot is heading, but a person, now – a person will fool you.' This is a wonderful observation of French cinema and Hilary Mantel should stick to, er, I'm not too sure as I see nothing of interest in her novels.
Bertrand Blier's film, on the other hand, is something of a masterpiece. But a subtle one.
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