Rien sur Robert

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.

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.

I just saw it again after many years and I must say that Rien sur Robert is very enjoyable film, very clever comedy about emotions and our expectations about habits and feelings.

Robert, before the story begins, has done something that he shouldn't (and MeisterK too!), and he continues making wrong choices, all the time, to the end of the film, and this is what makes the plot so different from the Hollywood-plots.

But the best part is dialog of the characters, who are so amazing types with their way of behave.

And the actors make excellent work.

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 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.