The main interest of this movie is its cast: Lea Massari was one of the best Italian actresses. She's retired now and has become a painter. Gérard Blain (who passed away in 2000),like her,worked in Italy and in his native country where he became a too neglected director (8 movies and one MTV one,most of them highly commendable) .As for the late Laurent Terzieff , he became rarer and rarer on the screens along the years ,it seems that his ambitious acting would scare the directors .
The three actors are better than the parts they were given ; Massari is the bourgeois boheme who feels stifled in her milieu where she's got nothing to do : her husband is an architect (whose ideas are baroque and thus finally declined ) she's a got a domestic help ; she tries to paint but her artistic time is short-lived ;in a small popular bistro where underdogs wind up , gambling (dice, cards) is the main interest of these people -but the depiction of this milieu is caricatured- and soon she learns to play poker ; slowly by inexorably ,she's plagued by the gambling fever ;it takes all Massari's talent to make us believe in this rich but frail bourgeois woman who little by little gets out of her depth in a world she didn't know before.
Laurent Terzieff is wasted in a tailor-made predictable part:he was par excellence the fallen aristocrat and he makes the best of a badly written part ;Gerard Blain,on the other hand , is cast against type :his rebellious side is displayed when he talks about the de rigueur May 68 ; sonny follows suit when he tells the cleaning lady his parents exploit her. By 1981 -the film was released exactly at the time the socialists rose to power in France - , these revolutionary vague desires were pure clichés.
Watch it because of the reunion of three great actors,but do not expect too much.
The three actors are better than the parts they were given ; Massari is the bourgeois boheme who feels stifled in her milieu where she's got nothing to do : her husband is an architect (whose ideas are baroque and thus finally declined ) she's a got a domestic help ; she tries to paint but her artistic time is short-lived ;in a small popular bistro where underdogs wind up , gambling (dice, cards) is the main interest of these people -but the depiction of this milieu is caricatured- and soon she learns to play poker ; slowly by inexorably ,she's plagued by the gambling fever ;it takes all Massari's talent to make us believe in this rich but frail bourgeois woman who little by little gets out of her depth in a world she didn't know before.
Laurent Terzieff is wasted in a tailor-made predictable part:he was par excellence the fallen aristocrat and he makes the best of a badly written part ;Gerard Blain,on the other hand , is cast against type :his rebellious side is displayed when he talks about the de rigueur May 68 ; sonny follows suit when he tells the cleaning lady his parents exploit her. By 1981 -the film was released exactly at the time the socialists rose to power in France - , these revolutionary vague desires were pure clichés.
Watch it because of the reunion of three great actors,but do not expect too much.