I guess Robert Guidiguian loves his wife Ariane Ascaride because he photographs her so lovingly but he sure likes to make her suffer. In the only film I can recall off the top of my head in which she had both a husband, child and stable family relationship (the superb Marie-Jo and her 2 loves) she was unable to settle for this and had to take a lover. Normally, as here, she is unhappy in her relationship - assuming she has one and is not a single mother. Here she is really up against it; married to a waste of space who hasn't worked since Ludivine Sagnier made a movie with her clothes on, working herself all night at the fish market, caring for her teenage single mother and junkey with it daughter and getting insults for her pains, and finally turning tricks herself to pay for the monkey on her daughter's back. Against all the odds this is actually a Joy to watch because Ascaride is so luminescent and just one smile can light up Marseilles. As usual the director is flogging his pet hobby-horse and by now he really COULD train a pig to encapsulate it via the refrain Nobody Knows The Truffles I've Seen. For all that he does manage a light touch and most of the vignettes come off thanks to his repertory company of first-rate actors. As long as this cat keeps on churnin em out I'll keep getting it up at the box-office and you can't say fairer than that. 8/10
Review of La ville est tranquille
