Rien sur Robert

"Nothing about Robert" is the description of empty, mediocre, hateful and paranoid existences... If the leading characters declare once in a while their love, they really like to let suffer each other. Is it a comedy or a drama? Is there even a plot? I had the pleasure of watching this unclassifiable movie because the characters in their vileness and outrageousness make one laugh. I loved their complexity which makes them at the same time close and odious. Especially, I discovered Valentina Cervi, actress with a very disconcerting performance, which interprets an exoplanet in the intellectual Parisian microcosm. Luchini is faithful to himself i.e. one always wonders from when he does a little too much. Sandrine Kiberlain is perfect in all the details.

Do characters have to be credible and does a dialogue have to be realistic for a movie to be 'good'? This movie certainly isn't everyone's cup of tea. The typical french virtues/vices of film making are present here: "over-intellectualizing, not tying up a storyline, and wasting time on details", yet, at the same time, the film satirizes exactly this French behaviour, and that what for me makes it very enjoyable, and proves its one step ahead of the current french film makers who all too often take themselves much too seriously without delivering anything intellectually original or emotionally engaging. In particular Sandrine kiberlaine's character is very entertaining.

I think people were confused that there were no heroes and heroines. Just flawed people trying to hide their imperfections and behave in a polite bourgeois fashion despite the mayhem created by the film review. It's not a movie to sit gawping at with popcorn. I was fascinated and laughing at the same time. I've never forgotten watching it.

Initially, I stopped watching a copy of this film because I found myself feeling disgusted with the protagonists. Later, I decided to watch the film again as an impartial observer. To me, it became an interesting black comedy of frailties and morals.

This is a story of middle-class immorality and a pathetic obsession reminiscent of Maugham's Of Human Bondage. Morally-weak Didier (Fabrice Luchini) tries vainly to break his ties with brazen/ promiscuous Juliette (Sandrine Kiberlain). She has no need to be reasonable/considerate as long as she has the upper hand. Didier vacillates in a promising affair with insatiable Aurélie (Valentine Cervi) which would free him from Juliette. Others involved with Didier and Juliette are womanizer Jérome (Laurent Lucas) and his fiancée Violaine (Nathalie Beautefeu). Unfortunately talented Michel Piccoli is wasted in his role as Ariel, Lucien's smug/outspoken critic.

As in this film, Luchini seems to specialize in far less than ideal `heros'. In the '96 Beaumarchais the Scoundrel, Luchini was a brilliant-but-roguish delight and Kiberlain played his confidante/ mistress-and-later-wife. In '90 La Discrete, he played an egotistical womanizer who gets his come-uppance.

I disagree with MeisterK's comment that this is a "plotless, pointless, depressing, just plainly bad" film. (In any case, depressing just doesn't fit with the rest of the epithets. It takes a *good*, dark film to affect today's jaded audience to/near the point of depression.)

This film is certainly not one made to please the masses, but genuine works of art are rarely created with that intention. This is a very rich and intelligent film. The writing is impeccable and the directing just as good.

Michel Piccoli gives a great performance, as do Luchini, Cervi and Kiberlain.