Amazon.com video review:
Daniel Auteuil (Manon of the
Spring) plays Stephane, the curiously diffident coowner of an
exclusive violin brokerage and repair shop. A brilliant technician,
Stephane can make any instrument live up to its promise, yet he is
emotionally remote himself, disconnected from passionate
experience. His partner, Maxime (André Dussollier), lacks
Stephane's gifts but is rich in personality and desire. When Maxime's
new lover, a violinist named Camille (Emmanuelle Béart), is
drawn to Stephane's still waters, the latter is briefly moved, thus
destroying the fragile, symbiotic relationship between all three
individuals. Veteran French filmmaker Claude Sautet (of the
Oscar-winning César et Rosalie) has made a powerful film
here expressed in the smallest of gestures, just as one might tune the
strings of a violin ever-so-slightly to achieve perfection. Sautet
indeed employs such a sonorous motif in this story, in which violins
always seem to be playing and suggesting that the principal characters
look at life as they do music: something to be tinkered with and
manipulated for effect. --Tom Keogh
