A Few Days with Me

Martial comes from a wealthy family and has just been discharged from a psychiatric hospital. The family owns a chain of supermarkets. His mother sends him to Limoges to put a failing store right. He goes, and takes no interest at all in the business. He stays first in the store manager's house, then takes a flat of his own, and gets close to Francine, the maid in that house. Quietly, he takes apart the order of the town and the way each person there treats the next. Claude Sautet directs, with Daniel Auteuil as Martial and Sandrine Bonnaire as Francine, alongside Jean-Pierre Marielle and Danielle Darrieux. It runs over two hours, a film in Sautet's own register, between comedy and sadness.