Let's face it: the people in this film of vacationing Frenchmen are often unpleasant, sometimes downright loathsome. And yet, I had a good time watching, owing to Michel Blanc's skill at keeping all the balls in the air. I don't know how many speaking parts there are, maybe 20, but the energy never flags because of the marvelous actors. Karin Viard is my favorite actress for comedy; here she is wonderful as the frustrated wife of Podalydès trying to scrimp through a holiday that their finances really don't allow. The scene of Podalydès standing on the cliff, with Rampling quietly trying to buck him up, Ulliel crouched below, his tryst with Mélanie Laurent interrupted, and Viard gabbing away unwittingly with her friends until her husband jumps is a comic masterpiece.Carole Bouquet is another favorite of mine, since she stole Bunuel's last picture Cet obscur objet du désir over 30 years ago. She too is great in comedy--here she is saddled with the most jealous husband in recent film memory (go back to François Cluzet's harassing of Emmanuelle Béart in L'enfer). Blanc keeps yelling at her, accusing her of infidelities, and she grimly makes the best of it, helped by her new-found friends Rampling and Viard. As I said at the outset, sometimes the characters do unpleasant things, but you don't get the feeling that the deck is stacked against them.

This started fairly well and looked like it would be very amusing and for some I know it is. For me though, the characters begin to get rather irritating and by the end really annoying. It seems incomprehensible that any of them would carry on the way they do. 'Carry On', is just about the right expression, too. Director Blanc, who plays the excruciating fat man who thinks his middle aged wife is off with everybody, waffles away in the accompanying 'featurette', seemingly unaware that he has produced something akin to the infamous English series and thinks he's Eisenstein instead. Yes, pretentious is another word that comes to mind, and even if this is based upon an English book and has some elements of the worst of this country's yob/snobby business it is in the end a very French movie. We may overrate our silly soap operas but only the French would consider them 'significant'.

subtle, refined, typically french, investigating human relations in a more complex manner, but all with a smile on your face (a smile ?, no, sorry, A BIG LAUGH !).LAUGHING and LAUGHING and LAUGHING !!!VERY ORIGINAL (again - typically french)If you like french movies you MUST see it. If not ... run away.

A moving, sometimes hilarious film about a group of characters who go on vacation together just to be confronted with each other and their own lies toward the others and themselves. A family that has lost both their baby daughter and all their money keep pretending towards their rich friends that they still live well; a middle-aged couple separate for the first time for vacation and both make new and surprising emotional experiences; a notoriously jealous husband turns his pretty wife's life into hell; a young mother searches desperately for a new man in her life and finds a dashingly handsome, but very suspicious guy; a young employee goes to America with his boss' daughter whom he loves, only to see himself ruthlessly let down by her.The week on vacation changes the lives of the characters in one way or the other: friendships and love blossom; other relationships end; everyone makes important personal experiences.No-one of the characters is entirely dislikeable (maybe the bitchy, sex-crazed daughter is the most), but they keep hurting each other in spite that many of the characters care a lot about the others, notably Charlotte Rampling's Elizabeth.A film about the complicated and intriguing ways of love, friendship and caring that makes one think a lot. Wonderfully played by an excellent cast, sensitively written by also-director and star Michel Blanc (he plays the most grotesque character, the jealous husband).