Ah, c'était ça la vie!

We all may know people like the respectable, rich and conservative "de Reuilly-Nonancourt". Daddy is a dry balding authoritarian, mum is beautiful but rarely gets a say in anything, in fact neither do the children, successful and cultivated but dominated, and the maid or maids are silently efficient in the big mansion. OK, we may not "know" people like this, but they are believable :).

Déborah François's Julie freshness can turn even a stereotyped heroine into somebody almost believable. Raphaël Personnaz instead has nuances and doubts about the script/ should we say "family crucible" he's born into from the start. Her sister, beautiful Julie Judd, Virginie from "Pas de Panique" does again the "stunnig blonde", but this time with a heart.

Ludmila Mikaël has done a host of other films, even another similar TV series "Le sanglot des anges", her mature beauty is a counterbalance to the colonel, a truly hateable Claude Brasseur. No surprises here given he's such great actor he makes it easy to forget it's not easy to be a good baddie.

Cinematography is fine, as well as the 50's France, from fashion (!), music, decoration, cars, buildings. Spain's brief shootings are also fine.

Summing up, a good TV series, enjoyable to watch, transmit enough nostalgia to be remembered. A sort of "chronicle of how young rebellious leftish Parisian intellectuals do in the 50'".