Second Chance

'The whole idea is mad!' screams lawyer Denner when the newly imprisoned heroine (Deneuve) suggests that they conceive a child in her cell to give her something to live for. But this is a film by Claude Lelouch, the master of eccentric kitsch, and everything is mad - not least the finale, when yet another man and another woman find total happiness on the heights of Mont Blanc. But for once the madness isn't full-blooded enough to be satisfying: instead of juggling four storylines in the air, Lelouch is content with one and a half. And time hangs increasingly heavy as the plot ambles along portentously, following the heroine's adjustment to the pangs of life and love after sixteen years in a swish prison. Not exactly a cruel disappointment, but a disappointment none the less.