My good friend Writer's Reign, a true connoisseur of the French cinema ,wrote the first review ,and as usual,I second all that he said.It's incredible that ,in 7 years ,no French user felt like sending a comment .
Writer's insists on what I would call a "prologue" ,taking place in the subway:this incident is the straw that breaks the camel's back for the hero is already paranoiac ,depressive and terribly stressed.
For a while I feared the incident on the street with the cops could lead the movie into the clichéd post -68 cinema territory:"cops are b.......";these policemen on the street have really a hard work to do ,they get stressed too,and the fact is that Alex is really a pain in the neck that night.The suicide rate is high in French police ,certainly higher than among accountants in suits.
But fortunately ,Emmanuelle Cuau put the whole French society on trial.In her movie,her characters belong to middle class,no wealth ,but no poverty either.In the hospital ,a woman asks Béatrice if she looks haunted ,then if she is red in the face ;in her taxi ,another one begins to talk about her shrink ,which infuriates her .
It goes to show that in-communicability is in the center of the movie;wherever it takes place,be it in the precinct ,in the mental hospital or during the job interviews ,it's like talking to a brick wall,in a Kafkaesque -as Leon wrote- world.
Reductio ad absurdum:it is when he cheats (the Mickey Mouse degrees which he got on his computer) that Alex learns the rules of the game ,that he becomes part of the "normal" society.It should be pointed out that the ending remains very ambiguous :is Alex in through the out door? Very well acted by the two principals ,and the secondary characters are extremely true to life.
