Place Vendôme

I loved this movie. Yes, I can understand that it is often opaque and may make you reach for the rewind a few times to understand what it was you were just seeing - yes, there are many characters and not too much explanation - but it's not more complicated than, say Funeral in Berlin or The Maltese Falcon.

This is the sort of movie that people who think they might want to try a European movie should see - the clothes, the style, the characters, the stunning contemporary settings, the 85% explained plot, the beautiful women, the roles of jewels and mistresses, striving and excess, guilt and recrimination, forgiveness and imbalance, and an underworld pressing close up against a very haut monde.

I think this and My Favorite Season are as good as anything Deneuve has ever done. Both are quite remarkable given that she has been in movies for over forty years. All the actors are quite remarkable - and Emmanuelle Seigner (whom you may remember from Frantic with Harrison Ford, Bitter Moon with Hugh Grant) is all slender strong beauty - and a wonderful blonde contrast with the older blonde, heavy-set/blowsy (in character) Deneuve.

The movie completely jumps any moral compass headings - and yet somehow one doesn't mind.

So even though you may feel you must watch it twice, you'd enjoy it both times.

It's as cool and elegant a movie as I've ever seen. And yet almost as sad a movie as I've ever seen. It's wonderful.