La Vie à l'Envers

This first feature from Jessua, who made the wonderful Jeu de Massacre, coolly and wittily watches its central character, a serious but unexceptional estate agent, withdraw from things into a world of his own. First he lets go his job, and then his wife of only two weeks. The strength of the film, which begins with a calculated mundaneness, is its lack of either explanation or interpretation of the man's behaviour. Whether he is retreating into a life of inner contemplation, as some have claimed, or whether he is cracking up, is left deliberately unclear. As a piece of observation and as a description of human behaviour, particularly domestic, it's rather fine and consistently droll.