This one of those French movies where you cannot imagine many of the characters living a life off the screen. And if they did, you'd hit them.

Bruno (Auteuil) is a politically-motivated writer left high and dry when the Berlin Wall falls and it was revealed Stalin was a nasty piece of work.

However, if his journalism is bracketed firmly with Soviet-style revolutionary socialism, his treatment of women is reactionary, to say the least.

His long-time partner Gaelle (Emmanuelle Devos) has just twigged that he's having an affair with the youthful Nathalie (Sagnier).

However, while visiting Bruno's communist uncle, Nathalie learns in an overheard conversation that he considers her love for him pathetic.

Distraught, she heads home while Bruno, on an errand for his uncle, bumps into the haughtily vulnerable Beatrice...and falls for her.

Auteuil, who memorably starred in Jean de Florette, has the look of a Gallic Alan Titchmarsh but, here, without the charm.

He's a thoroughly despicable twerp, over-flowing with self-pity one minute and running his hand up the nearest woman's skirt the next.

Quite what they see him is never apparent - where's the allure of a sap laughably wrong-footed by the course of history?

The dialogue, also by seasoned screenwriter Bonitzer, is brightened by the occasional witticism but the plot never rises above lame French farce.

Scott Thomas does her best with a paper thin, bloodless character who has managed the neat trick of marrying her stepfather (well, we are in the French boondocks).

It's all a lot less clever than it likes to think it is, in that whimsical way where the odd gag comes across as the collected works of Oscar Wilde.

Tim Evans