User Reviews

This is fun! Maria (Chiara Mastroianni) has an eye for pretty young men and has lots of casual affairs. She can not understand why husband Richard (Benjamin Biolay) is so upset when he finds out. (In a cheeky bit of casting, director/writer Christophe Honoré has cast Mastroianni opposite her own ex-husband.) After a row, Maria moves to the hotel across the street from the couple's apartment. But rather than the hoped-for time to think, she finds the room somehow invaded first by Richard's younger self (Vincent Lacoste); then Irène (Camille Cottin), the woman Richard was in love with when he first met Maria twenty years before; then her own 'will' (Stéphane Roger) which for some reason takes the form of crooner Charles Aznavour; and finally all the young men with whom she has had flings. It isn't long before one or two of these spirits wander across the road to talk with Richard - before everyone ends up in a bar listening to Barry Manilow.

Is it a dream? A hoax? A Red Kryptonite illusion? That is probably open to the viewer's interpretation. What is definitely certain is that this is cinema not taking itself too seriously. Although there is deep talk of commitment and sustaining sexual desire in a long-lasting marriage, the viewer never has to wait for long before the next chuckle moment arrives. Mastroianni's fine line in subtle comic exasperation is nicely contrasted by Biolay's more serious performance as the cuckolded husband. One of the best films I saw at the 2019 London Film Festival.

I like this film which was a twist on the usual rom com fantasy and something of a role reversal for French movies nirmally focused on the pecadillios of the married man. Here the wife has the straying eye but when found out has to spend a night apart from her husband in a hotel opposite their apartment with a collection of former livers and a younger version of her husband. I can see why this high risk film might annoy the pants off so many reviewers but if you go with the glow it is a seeetly intoxicating story of love, desire, the roving eye of some wives and the ludicrous flights of fancy our imaginations can take us on when faced with the hard choice to stay or go.

A deliberately absurd plot taken to various conclusions isn't quite what I was expecting, but this is mostly very enjoyable.

I'm not a Charles Anzavour expert, but I must say that his appearance was a nice surprise, even though the guy playing him was not immediately recognisable to me as such - and I loved the switching of the baby for a mannequin once his "mother" decided that his name wasn't important as he never existed. Despite the various other interleavings of characters (and multiple actors playing the same character at the same time), it all "makes sense" in support of the plot, once one factors in the mostly casual acceptance of infidelity.

Good fun.