preppy-3 A French comedy about adultery. Two distant cousins meet at a wedding--Ludovic (Victor Lanoux) and Marthe (Marie-Christine Barrault). They're both married with children. They hit it off and become good friends. Their respective spouses think they're sleeping together. They're not but they decide why not try it?HUGE SPOILER!!! A BIG hit in the US (and even nominated for Best Foreign Film) this is a light-weight, fluffy and totally unremarkable film. It's flatly directed and the story wanders all over the place. It also presents adultery as being no big deal (!!!) At the beginning when Marthe's husband Pascal is breaking up with the multiple women he's been sleeping with it's presented as cute, charming and even funny! This was obviously long before AIDS but I still find that attitude pretty disgusting. Adultrey is not funny and cute and shouldn't be presented that way. Seriously, how about the kids in the respective families? Their feelings or thoughts are never bought up. To make it worse it ends with Marthe and Ludovic run away with each other and THIS is presented as a good thing!!!! The morals (or lack of them) in this film is bewildering. It gets a 4 only because the whole cast is good, it IS pleasant (if morally bankrupt) and Barrault and Lanoux play off each other well. There's also some minor female nudity. I can't recommend this at all but a lot of people liked it back in the 1970s. Use your own judgment.

MartinHafer If the movie had just been about a man and a woman having an affair after their partners first had an affair, this might have been a good movie. The first unfaithful pair consisted of a guy who was a serial adulterer who should have needed a case of Viagra just to keep up with his many affairs and the lady was a self-involved neurotic. SO, when THEIR spouses get together and build a friendship and then eventually sleep together, you have some sympathy for them. BUT, what about the children? They both have kids (and one of them is pretty young), but all they are concerned about is their infatuation and getting back at their unfaithful spouses. While this might have been accepted by audiences when the film was released, I just felt this was ugly and selfish. They could have divorced their slimy spouses, but neither showed any regard for the innocent kids. The film is well-made but way too self-centered to have any positive lasting message.

Dale-40 I seem to recall seeing an American version of this French film about about a woman in her early 30s meeting the nephew of her mother's new husband at her mother's wedding. The French version is able in just 96 minutes to capture the quirky personalities in all three generations as the extended family gathers again at another wedding, a funeral and a children's party. In the moments in between the gatherings, the two cousins get to know each other very well.

Coxer99 Pleasant romantic comedy about French social mores with Barrault and Lanoux starring as cousins - by marriage - who first become friends who eventually fall in love. They finally have an affair, flaunting it beautifully to their entire family. Some early development of farce, but not taken far enough, although there is a wonderful funeral sequence where everyone seems preoccupied with other things, rather than a deceased member of the family. (Pascal incessantly looking at his watch; the children assuming the funeral is another party.)Great performances from Barrault and Lanoux highlight the fun. Barrault and the film were Oscar nominated in 1975.