The only time I felt anything for one of the characters here was near the beginning, when Camille, the lead actor in a Parisian production of a Pirandello play, a French woman speaking in Italian, has trouble remembering her lines (she is pre-occupied by a past love affair which had taken place in that city). The rest of the time I was either mildly amused, or just bored. It is hard to find empathy with a group who seem to be as artificial off the stage as they are on it. There are some nice moments, especially when Ugo fends off temptation from the lovely Dominique, and the duel scene between Ugo and the prat of a philosopher who was once his partner Camille's lover, but the whole thing takes far too long (2 hours 20 minutes), lacks tension and above all calls for minimal involvement on the part of the viewer.
It's rather interesting that Ugo is searching for an unpublished 18th century play. If theatre is to avoid being relegated to museums, producers need either to put on new stuff, or at least to present old material in an innovative way. Ugo seems to regard the past as more important than the future (a pointer, perhaps to the age of the director here).
The atmosphere here reminded me of `Amelie'. Both films have popped up at various film festivals around the world as examples of current French film production. If they are typical, then you might think the French film industry is headed for irrelevancy, but the Marseilles films of Robert Guediguian fortunately suggest otherwise.
