This movie is really only for Sacha Guitry fanatics. It is basically one long monologue delivered by the narrator, Guitry. We see various characters, but they almost never speak. It is as if we were watching a silent movie to which someone had added a narrative voice track.
Yes, some of that narration is mildly clever, and Guitry certainly knows how to deliver his own lines. But the plot is uninteresting, the script only passingly clever.
This is very inferior to Guitry movies like Les Perles de la couronne.
If you like Guitry's sardonic humor, you will get some pleasure out of this movie. Other than that, I don't see much of an audience for it. I myself will have forgotten it by tomorrow.
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Two years after writing the above review, I've rewatched the movie, and I find that I still agree with what I wrote then. The whole movie is a monologue, with only occasionally funny lines. It all hangs on the sound of Guitry's voice and his delivery of his lines. Yes, he was very good at delivering his own texts. But an 80-minute monologue, and not a particularly clever one, is too much to ask of the power of his delivery or the patience of the audience. Again, really for die-hard Guitry aficionados only.
Yes, some of that narration is mildly clever, and Guitry certainly knows how to deliver his own lines. But the plot is uninteresting, the script only passingly clever.
This is very inferior to Guitry movies like Les Perles de la couronne.
If you like Guitry's sardonic humor, you will get some pleasure out of this movie. Other than that, I don't see much of an audience for it. I myself will have forgotten it by tomorrow.
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Two years after writing the above review, I've rewatched the movie, and I find that I still agree with what I wrote then. The whole movie is a monologue, with only occasionally funny lines. It all hangs on the sound of Guitry's voice and his delivery of his lines. Yes, he was very good at delivering his own texts. But an 80-minute monologue, and not a particularly clever one, is too much to ask of the power of his delivery or the patience of the audience. Again, really for die-hard Guitry aficionados only.