The problem with Michel Deville's soulful meditation on life for Jews immediately after WWII is that nothing much happens over the 90 minute running time. A Holocaust survivor opens (and overstaffs) a tailor shop, while each of the employees tries to put their life back together. Their featherweight plots connect at the shop, and give the movie the barest notion of forward mobility. This is the kind of movie that stuffy film critics rate highly out of a sense of guilt and fear, but which never connect with real audiences, desperately waiting for something to happen.

Aka Un monde presque paisible.