renown surrealist director , the 77-year - old frenchman alain resnais ( hiroshima , mon amour / last year at marienbad / m ? lo ) , has created a lighthearted musical played as an homage to britisher dennis potter and his pennies from heaven ( 1978 tv serial , 1981 movie ) and the singing detective ( 1986 ) .
the film follows potter 's gimmicky style of having the characters jump into lip - synched old or contemporary french pop songs to express their private thoughts .
he also follows the kind of sweet and colorful musicals his fellow countryman jacques demy loved to direct , such as " the umbrellas of cherbourg " and " the young girls of rochefort .
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the tale has resnais 's unique touches as a director to go along with his homage .
it is a satire about class differences and falling in love with the wrong person , and that there is a song in everyone 's heart for every occasion .
what hinders this production is that the stars are not portraying particularly engaging characters , the songs are not memorable and stand little chance of being recognized by an american audience ( the exceptions might be the edith piaf and maurice chevalier numbers ) , and the farce seems more banal than daring .
yet it is not without its striking moments and charms , such as when jane birkin does a cameo and sings one of her own songs .
also , the glossy amberlike photography added a very french romantic feeling to the story , while the mood of paris as being a place for love to flourish above all else , which has always been embellished in movie lore , comes through with flying colors .
it also does a good job of showing you the way paris is in the 1990s and in the way ordinary people exist there .
it tells the romantic story of six parisians who become intertwined with each other in their ordinary lives as they search for happiness .
they are
the attractive sisters odile ( sabine az ?
ma )
and camille ( agnes jaoui ) , with the older businesswoman odile married and decidedly set on a bourgeois life of material comforts .
she is married to the glum and laconic claude ( pierre arditi ) .
she once went out with a businessman , nicolas ( jean - pierre bacri ) , who left her 8-years ago and now shows up in paris and asks her help to find someone to rent a flat for his family .
simon ( andre dussolier ) works as a real - estate salesman and is trying to find nicolas a flat , in his spare time he writes radio plays .
simon 's boss is the much younger , unscrupulous and arrogant marc duveyrier ( lambert wilson ) , who inherited the firm from his father and is the real - estate agent selling a more luxurious and larger flat with a better view to odile , but fails to tell her that a building project is going up soon that will block her view .
screenwriters and actors jean - pierre bacri and agnes jaoui wrote themselves the best parts .
jaoui 's camille is a university scholar finishing up a ph .
d . in history , using for her thesis the study of ' the yeomen in the year 1000 at lake paladru . '
she works as a tour guide in the meantime and suffers from panic attacks , even though she appears to have outwardly perfect self - control .
on her tours for the last four years has been the much older simon , pretending to be doing research for his plays but really attracted to her , but not having the nerve to tell her this .
to his dismay , he finds out she is dating his mean - spirited but handsome boss , whom she meets when looking at her sister 's new place and seeing him crying but not realizing that it was from a cold , not because he 's so sensitive .
bacri as the classy nicolas , turns out to be now working as a chauffeur .
he is a hypochondriac with a history of depression who visits many doctors , until he finds one who tells him there is nothing wrong with him .
odile still pines for him , but he 's married , telling her he expects his wife to arrive shortly .
love is ' the same old song ' that makes the world go ' round , even when all the characters are liars and not exactly open to what their true motives are .
everything comes together in a bourgeois housewarming party for odile 's place , as the characters reveal their true feelings and all their deceptions and neurotic impulses are either uncovered or about to be .
there 's not a lot of bite to this satirical musical , but resnais has never made a bad film and is one of the best current french directors , if not the best .
this film is not one his great ones , but it still has enough pep in its light touches to be interesting .
it not only has an odd way for the characters to break into song
but -- some males even sing in a female voice while some females sing in a male voice .
it is also interesting in the way it examines its characters ' behavior as being similar in business as in love .
striking moments and charms does a good job it is also interesting one of the best current french directors , if not the best