Les Choses de la Vie

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.