Synopsis
The Things of Life (Les Choses de la vie, 1970) is a French drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Claude Sautet. Pierre (Michel Piccoli), a prosperous architect in his forties, has left his wife Catherine for the younger Hélène (Romy Schneider). On paper, a clean decision.
He isn't finished with either of them. Sautet doesn't give Pierre speeches — he shows the indecision in glances, in a letter Pierre rewrites over and over and never sends. Piccoli makes this kind of paralysis watchable; Schneider plays Hélène with a quiet clarity that suggests she has understood the situation long before Pierre has. The film opens with a car crash and keeps circling back to it, so you watch the whole story knowing what it's building toward. One of Sautet's finest, and a key film in Schneider's career in French cinema. Stream The Things of Life (1970) on iFILM.
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