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Bookmark this pageLes Choses de la Vie (1969)
Director: Claude Sautet
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
A not uninteresting attempt to make a film about ordinary, everyday minutiae, with Piccoli as an average sensual man, vaguely torn between a demanding mistress (Schneider) and an ex-wife (Massari) to whom he still feels bound. Quietly and deftly, Sautet sketches in the portrait of a man gradually becoming aware that he is coming to a crossroads in his life. But since the opening sequence reveals that he is shortly to die in a car crash, his attempt to make some decision about his life is much ado about nothing - which is precisely the point of the film. Difficult to make a film about banality without being boring in the process, but Sautet all but pulls it off, thanks to a beautifully understated performance from Piccoli which manages to extract a whole lifetime of meaning from a simple gesture like lighting a cigarette, and to illuminate the film's meticulously detailed naturalistic surface.Author: TM
Cast & crew
Director: Claude Sautet
Cast: Michel Piccoli, Romy Schneider, Lea Massari, Gérard Lartigau, Jean Bouise, Henri Nassiet full cast
Duration: 89 mins
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