Synopsis
A dark tale of working-class life in Marseilles, a city in crisis. Interesting characters include a hard-bitten but compassionate fish market worker with a drug addicted daughter and a moody bartender with a shocking secret life.
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Cast
- Ariane AscarideMichèle
- Jean-Pierre DarroussinPaul
- Jacques BoudetPaul's Father
- Christine BrücherViviane Froment
- Jacques PieillerYves Froment
- Pascale RobertsPaul's Mother
- Julie-Marie ParmentierFiona
- Gérard MeylanGérard
Recommendations
- 90
Variety
Guediguian's seemingly sprawling but in fact quite precise picture takes a while to establish itself, but is eventually rewarding viewing. - 90
Los Angeles Times
Intimate and human yet deeply ambitious, a powerhouse of a film made with a disturbing vision. - 83
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Fumbling characters find that survival is not a matter of economics alone, it's also a matter of hope. - 80
L.A. Weekly
Leaves you reeling from the force of the humanity it captures and -- in its own gut-wrenching way -- honors. - 63
Charlotte Observer
The sense of loneliness and disaffection makes its effect. Guédiguian offers no answers, and the hope he supplies is almost surreal. - 63
Chicago Tribune
The movie may not be as toxic and ultimately hopeless as Todd Solondz's "Happiness," but it also fails to find humor, dark or light, in anything. - 58
Entertainment Weekly
It doesn't quite wash. Guédiguian has a telling instinct for the buried shame of working-class squalor, but his film is inflated with a doom that feels programmatic rather than earned. - 50
Chicago Reader
Some of the film's situations and motivations seem convenient or underdeveloped, but Ascaride and Darroussin are riveting, and Guediguian's frankness and empathy illuminate this kaleidoscope of lonely lives.