Les feux de la chandeleur

This is the obsolete moral of an outdated flick.

A bourgeois woman (Annie Girardot:it's all the more surprising as Girardot has always been known for her liberal ideas)is at odds with her hubby,a notary (Jean Rochefort).She supports the lefties and the commies, which he cannot take anymore.So they part and he gets married again with a very straight lady;Ten years later,the first wife thinks her husband is about to come back to her.

There were a lot of movies dealing with the post- events -of -68 era but this one takes the biscuit!Whereas the others were praising the new liberties,(and were not that much good for all that) this one tends to show that ,had the heroine refrained from demonstrating,she could have been very happy with husband and children (The children's characters ,played by Bernard Le Coq and Truffaut's protégée Claude Jade are not convincing at all).And why does "Mamouschka " (=mom)throw her new friend (a nice schoolteacher ,more handsome than her unprepossessing husband ,played by Bernard Fresson)into her daughter's arms? The movie has its fans in France.Some go as far as to say it's an "amour fou" .We haven't probably seen the same film.