On paper this isn't really my kind of movie by a country mile but I'm always ready to see anything that Depardieu decides to appear in and Nicole Garcia is not too hard to take either if anybody asks you but then you have to factor in Resnais, a loose canon whichever way you slice it, a guy who's as likely to film a Viennese Operetta with a static camera as lay a metaphysical treatise on an unsuspecting audience. He's also something of a risk-taker and here he does himself no favors in the opening minutes by giving the impression we've wandered into a lecture complete with lantern-slides. But soon you find yourself drawn into the three loosely connected stories and a little later you find you've surrendered completely to the left-handed charm. Not for the faint-hearted or the popcorn brigade. 8/10