Une Etrange affaire

1981, France, directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre

An extremely successful marriage of biting satire and fantasia, which might make a good double bill with Bartleby in terms of its analysis of work/life balance -- indeed, this seemed to me to be at the heart of the satire. Michel Piccoli is at the peak of his considerable powers at this point in his career, and Gérard Lanvin proved something of a revelation: he's a capable lighter actor, and did particularly well in some successful buddy pictures of the period, but many of his later roles do little to stretch him as an actor.