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Cult Review
Senior Film Conservator
Honestly? Only if you’re already deep in the trenches of 1930s French drama. If you need a plot that moves at a brisk pace or, you know, makes sense, stay far away. It’s a patience-tester.
Yvonne Reyville is doing her best, but she’s trapped in a script that feels like it was stitched together from scraps of paper found on a studio floor. There’s a lot of staring off into the middle distance. Lots of heavy, dramatic breathing.
I found myself checking the time about thirty minutes in. Not because I was bored—well, maybe a little—but because the geography of the film is just baffling. Characters walk through doors and somehow arrive in a completely different city. It has a dreamy, logic-free quality that reminds me of the chaotic editing in Le chiffonnier de Paris, though with far less charm.
It’s not as polished as The Merry Widow, and it lacks that film's specific kind of sparkle. It’s just... gray. A very gray, very French, very old movie.
Sometimes, the camera lingers on a prop for way too long. A half-empty glass, a stray glove on the floor. It feels like the director was trying to make a statement, but the statement got lost in the mail. Maybe it’s profound? Maybe it’s just lazy blocking. Who knows.
If you watch it, do it with a glass of wine and low expectations. You might catch a weird shadow or a line of dialogue that makes you laugh out loud for no reason. 🎥
It’s not a masterpiece. It’s barely a coherent story. But it is there, existing in its own strange little bubble of time. Sometimes that’s enough.