Golden Eighties

A zippy, brightly coloured musical - rather like Jacques Demy on speed - which is a far cry from Akerman's earlier slow, serious examinations of women and their place. The setting is the enclosed world of a shopping mall: on one side Lili's hair salon, busy with excitable young shampoo girls; on the other a clothes boutique run by Monsieur Schwartz and wife Jeanne (played with a nervous false smile by Seyrig). Their son Robert lusts after Madonna-lookalike Lili, who shamelessly shifts between him and a lovelorn gangster. One of her girls, Mado, is hopelessly in love with Robert. Then Jeanne's old American lover turns up... Akerman breathlessly switches from one group to another, merging bustling set pieces with wistful solos, until somehow the threads come together in a celebration of tears for fears and rampant amour. Dangerously flirting with kitsch - some sections do resemble a wacky French pop special - Akerman once again gets away with the impossible by virtue of her energy, insight and enveloping sensuality.