Kritiken

One thing you can say for Sautet: he knew how to shoot a speeding automobile... The crash unfolds from so many angles that when Sautet finally runs the whole thing in real time—mere seconds onscreen—it feels like a rocket.

"Things” (“Les choses de la vie” in French) begins with the aftermath of a violent car crash along a rural motorway... What follows is a remarkable portrait of the compromises of marriage and the fickle stirrings of the human heart, structured as an intricate narrative jigsaw: “Gone Girl” avant la lettre.

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.

I should mind this syrup less if Sautet showed more of a conscience in serving it—if the relationships seemed to have been felt rather than merely displayed; if the sailboat (a most important image) were not always under power with sails flapping: if you couldn't see the crash helmet on the stuntman in the automobile accident; if Poccoli actually took a mansized bite of those superior restaurant meals. However, Piccoli is the only reasonable point of interest in "The Things of Life."