Paris s'éveille

This third feature by former Cahiers du Cinéma critic Assayas is his best to date, and one of the few French movies about middle-class relationships that is neither precious nor airily detached from social realities. It's essentially a triangle drama: father (Léaud, playing his real age, for once), much younger second wife (Godrèche, fetching), and semi-estranged son (Langmann, son of Claude Berri). Fluently written and played with palpable enthusiasm by the entire cast, it works outwards from small details. Everything is precisely judged, from the hang of an art-class model's scrotum to the bearing of a waitress in a Chinese restaurant.