I will borrow the single word of  David Denby in the New Yorker : Dreadful.

I am just dumbfounded  by the fact that such an inane film has had rave reviews from French critics as well as American and British ones. I usually try to understand the reasons for the appeal of certain films when I am critical of them. In this case I am clueless and will not even try to analyse the film, fearing terminal boredom.

“The metatextual element reveals the film’s intellectual complexity, though one could easily enjoy it as a simple comedy and miss that entirely”. (Jenny Kermode).  There was next to no laughs in the audience of the West End cinema where I saw it. Do simplistic mentions of the 70s feminism, unions, sexual liberation, mixed with modern political and cinematic references consist  intellectual complexity?  

There is no way I can consider Suzanne more than a cardboard figure and Ozon as having anything to say about older women.  And am I the only person to have been disturbed by the lack of nuanced expressions in Deneuve’s face ?