A midlife crisis so awkward you'll thank god it's not you.
An aging dentist looks for a little liveliness by abandoning his wife in favor of a younger woman. When he learns that his mistress also has another younger lover, he gets jealous, but tries not to make an issue of it. In the end, he dumps her and returns to his wife, who is not about to stand for his middle-aged immaturity. She leaves him.
Acting
Stack's sweaty desperation is uncomfortably perfect.
Direction
Blain's cold eye makes humiliation feel intimate.
Director
Gérard Blain
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Robert Stack, best known as Eliot Ness in The Untouchables, took this rare French role because he wanted to escape his heroic image.
Released during France's post-68 reckoning with bourgeois values, the film was read as a critique of entitled male privilege—though some critics felt Blain was too sympathetic to François.
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