Just for Laughs

Michel and Juliette have just separated over his attachment to a much younger woman. Alice and Nicolas are still together, though perhaps only because Nicolas does not know his wife is seeing a sports photographer. The film follows what these four keep from one another and how the lies hold each other up. The account judges nobody and builds no dramatic reckoning; it gives what happens in a light, wry tone. The source of the comedy is not the events but the way each of them justifies themselves. None of the four is left in a position to look down on the others. Ornella Muti and Jean-Pierre Leaud appear in Lucas Belvaux’s hundred minute French film, completed in 1997.