This is a beautifully performed movie. In its second week in Paris at the spanking new Bibliotheque movie complex near the Gare D'Austerlitz, a few of us sat through it. The problem is that if you are not warned in advance about the technique it will take you quite a lot of time to determine whether you are watching an error or something new. Meantime, your mind works like a slot machine searching matching lineups symbols to figure out what is going on, who are these wonderfully attractive young people? Then you figure it out gradually, and by then your interest is quite well enough piqued that you will sit it out. Then you begin to enjoy it for what it is: A needle's stitch attempt to get on the screen the solitary joy of the novelists' technique of easily, gradually joining disparate stories all in one easy moment but spread across ninety minutes or so on screen and not on pages and paragraphs. In a novel, you can put the book down, think about it, go back to it. No such luxury here. And there could have been more stories here, and in fact you are left with the feeling that tons of stories have not been told at all or even touched upon. Or may even follow in a continuing stream of consciousness after you leave the film. In other words, this is a delicate examination of the choices we have to make in life just to get through it. Existence, in other words.