Nothing About Robert

I think people were confused that there were no heroes and heroines. Just flawed people trying to hide their imperfections and behave in a polite bourgeois fashion despite the mayhem created by the film review. It's not a movie to sit gawping at with popcorn. I was fascinated and laughing at the same time. I've never forgotten watching it.

I disagree with MeisterK's comment that this is a "plotless, pointless, depressing, just plainly bad" film. (In any case, depressing just doesn't fit with the rest of the epithets. It takes a *good*, dark film to affect today's jaded audience to/near the point of depression.)

This film is certainly not one made to please the masses, but genuine works of art are rarely created with that intention. This is a very rich and intelligent film. The writing is impeccable and the directing just as good.

Michel Piccoli gives a great performance, as do Luchini, Cervi and Kiberlain.

A genuine comedy of manners and mores with razor sharp timing and a troupe of actors, including the inimitable Michele Piccoli, who can convey a vast range of feelings with the slightest nuances of gesture or tone. The story of a French critic most famous for reviewing a film he never saw and the ups and downs of his love life is especially delicious if you are familiar with the hothouse atmosphere of French intellectual life. But the French gift for portraying the childish emotions that beset adult activities makes this film enjoyable for a wide audience.

Initially, I stopped watching a copy of this film because I found myself feeling disgusted with the protagonists. Later, I decided to watch the film again as an impartial observer. To me, it became an interesting black comedy of frailties and morals.

This is a story of middle-class immorality and a pathetic obsession reminiscent of Maugham's Of Human Bondage. Morally-weak Didier (Fabrice Luchini) tries vainly to break his ties with brazen/ promiscuous Juliette (Sandrine Kiberlain). She has no need to be reasonable/considerate as long as she has the upper hand. Didier vacillates in a promising affair with insatiable Aurélie (Valentine Cervi) which would free him from Juliette. Others involved with Didier and Juliette are womanizer Jérome (Laurent Lucas) and his fiancée Violaine (Nathalie Beautefeu). Unfortunately talented Michel Piccoli is wasted in his role as Ariel, Lucien's smug/outspoken critic.

As in this film, Luchini seems to specialize in far less than ideal `heros'. In the '96 Beaumarchais the Scoundrel, Luchini was a brilliant-but-roguish delight and Kiberlain played his confidante/ mistress-and-later-wife. In '90 La Discrete, he played an egotistical womanizer who gets his come-uppance.

I agree with MeisterK this movie was really bad. I think they wanted to make a kind of trendy intellectual movie but they totally missed the point. I find the overall stuff ridiculous, the characters are not credible at all, dialogs are nonsense,... and Luchini is playing Luchini...

It's not a typical french movie as MeisterK said. This one is just bad.