Le Grand Amour

The diminishing returns apparent in Etaix's films, derived from Tati but without the touch of genius (unmistakable even if you find Tati unfunny), came to a head with this tiresome whimsy which chose the unfortunate year of 1968 in which to satirise French bourgeois morality with a gentle affection that turns into approbation. About a respectable married man who escapes into fantasies about his nineteen-year-old secretary, only to return to the status quo a contentedly wiser man, it is witless, self-indulgent and cloyingly sentimental.