Life's Little Treasures

A few men and women gather for a few days in a villa. Among them are old attachments, new interests and things left unsaid. The days pass in small pleasures and long conversations. A piano stands in the middle of the house, and the music settles at the centre of the account. What is played is Gottschalk, and the music is very nearly the film’s leading player. Rather than build events, Michel Deville describes the state of being together. The account does not turn who loves whom into a great matter. The hundred and three minutes are compressed into a few days. Anémone, Xavier Beauvois and André Dussollier appear in Michel Deville’s French film, completed in 1994.