Rien sur Robert

The character of Didier, whose troubles all begin when he gives a bad review of a film he hasn't seen, was apparently based on a real-life critic who made a similarly lazy judgement about Emir Kusturica's "Undergound". From this starting point, Pascal Bonitzer gives us a humorous portrait of a superficial, middle-class writer who is about to reap the consequences of his intellectual and emotional dysfunctions.

Fabrice Luchini's deadpan, wide-eyed performance as the constantly non-plussed critic who lurches from one embarrassing predicament to another is perhaps the film's main delight. So much so, in fact, that it comes as a slight disappointment to discover the story developing into a conventional relationship dilemma: will Didier settle with his promiscuous fiancée Juliette (Sandrine Kiberlain) who takes a sadistic pleasure in humiliating him at every opportunity; or will he end up with the crazy, masochistic Aurélie (Valentina Cervi) who is Juliette's complete opposite?

While far from the best example of its type, this is a perfectly decent French relationship comedy, well acted and directed, darker and broader than Rohmer, occasionally laugh-out-loud funny (particularly in the scenes between Luchini and Kiberlain), and utterly inconsequential (well, the title does sort of warn us about that).

It has a great final line, by the way.

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.

A genuine comedy of manners and mores with razor sharp timing and a troupe of actors, including the inimitable Michele Piccoli, who can convey a vast range of feelings with the slightest nuances of gesture or tone. The story of a French critic most famous for reviewing a film he never saw and the ups and downs of his love life is especially delicious if you are familiar with the hothouse atmosphere of French intellectual life. But the French gift for portraying the childish emotions that beset adult activities makes this film enjoyable for a wide audience.

I agree with MeisterK this movie was really bad. I think they wanted to make a kind of trendy intellectual movie but they totally missed the point. I find the overall stuff ridiculous, the characters are not credible at all, dialogs are nonsense,... and Luchini is playing Luchini...

It's not a typical french movie as MeisterK said. This one is just bad.