

User Score
19 votes
He is a sales rep. She is a secretary. They live in the suburbs but she works in Paris. They don't see much of each other and spend much of their time in commuter trains. They try desperately to change job locations to be more often together, but... The plot is not the important thing in the film ; what makes it emblematic of the early and mid-seventies is the insouciant atmosphere. The '74 oil crisis had not yet morphed into a recession, and life was good - even though it was as hard as ever to find a home near one's workplace (or the reverse) ! Marthe Keller and Jacques Higelin are both excellent. The movie is not an all-time great, but it captures the "zeitgeist" of French life in the Seventies.
Director
Status
Released
Original Language
FR

Long married 50-somethings Brigitte and Xavier are prize cattle breeders in regional France. Life is good, but the departure of their children from home has thrown Brigitte’s world into flux, as she finds herself locked into routine. She keeps hoping for something else, something more. A party held by students on the adjoining property accelerates this latent crisis and Brigitte impulsively sets off for Paris under the guise of a doctor’s appointment. The city immediately invigorates her, and when she meets a charming Danish gentleman, she impulsively allows herself to be flattered by his attentions…


Ducros
Paris, in the early 1960s. Jean-Louis Joubert is a serious but uptight stockbroker, married to Suzanne, a starchy class-conscious woman and father of two arrogant teenage boys, currently in a boarding school. The affluent man lives a steady yet boring life. At least until, due to fortuitous circumstances, Maria, the charming new maid at the service of Jean-Louis' family, makes him discover the servants' quarter on the sixth floor of the luxury building he owns and lives in. There live a crowd of lively Spanish maids who will help Jean-Louis to open to a new civilization and a new approach of life. In their company - and more precisely in the company of beautiful Maria - Jean-Louis will gradually become another man, a better man.