Les Choses de la vie (The Things of Life)

Part of the BAMcinématek series Winners of the Prix Louis Delluc

Sat, April 18 at 2, 4:30, 6:50*, 9:30pm
*Intro by French film critic Michel Ciment

Directed by Claude Sautet
With Michel Piccoli, Romy Schneider

(1969) 89min

“Difficult to make a film about banality without being boring in the process, but Sautet all but pulls it off, thanks to a beautifully understated performance from Piccoli which manages to extract a whole lifetime of meaning from a simple gesture like lighting a cigarette, and to illuminate the film’s meticulously detailed naturalistic surface.” —Time Out London

Breaking from his earlier flirtations with gangster pictures (Classes tous risques), Sautet began forging a career as a master of psychological domestic drama with this film about an average bourgeois (Piccoli) who crashes his sportscar and, as he lies unconscious, ruminates on his life—his failed marriage, his mistress, his relationship with his son. Piccoli gives one of his most understated, nuanced performances and Sautet’s direction is meticulously detailed, extracting something profound from banalities of life. Winner of the 1969 Prix Delluc. Intro by Michel Ciment.

Time Out on Les Choses de la vie
"Quietly and deftly, Sautet sketches in the portrait of a man gradually becoming aware that he is coming to a crossroads in his life." More