In 40 years and 30 films Michel Deville has relentlessly experimented with form while offering an incredible variety of characters and themes. A director who likes challenges, whether writing original scripts or adapting literary works, Deville this time has, together with his wife and screenwriter Rosalinde, taken his inspiration from Robert Bober’s autobiographical Quoi de neuf sur la guerre?, a novel about the author’s childhood in the workshop of his father, a Jewish tailor in the garment district of Paris. The period is just after the War, when Jews can at last breathe the air of freedom and start again to believe in life, and a little tailor’s shop is rebuilding. Parents and children, adulterous relationships, amorous encounters, voluntary isolation—the whole spectrum of experience in this small shop—is rendered with grace, emotion and humor by a brilliant cast. This is a Shop Around the Corner in the aftermath of the Holocaust, where Deville—with a style close to music—directs with a delicate and moving touch. Almost exclusively set within the walls of the workshop, the film, with its nostalgic use of still photographs, has an elegiac quality enhanced by the music of little-known 19th century composer, Giovanni Bottesini. –SFIFF
