When a serial adulterer decamps to a hotel opposite her marital home, she is visited by a string of lovers and others from the past
Christophe Honoré, now edging into veteran status with his 12th film, once again steps up to the oche of desire and infidelity. But this peppy, flighty and self-involved film – a hybrid of marital drama, chamber piece, erotic farce and crypto-musical – hovers frustratingly outside the bullseye. Chiara Mastroianni is Maria, the man-eating Parisienne whose husband Richard (played by her former partner, the
Singer Benjamin Biolay) discovers her serial adultery, prompting her to decamp to the hotel over the road for a long, dark night of the soul.
Maria has to contemplate the meaning of her philandering and decide whether her marriage is worth saving. Hovering between reality and fantasy, she’s subject to multiple visitations: from Richard’s 25-year-old self, her disapproving mother and grandmother, the cougar-ish piano teacher who was her husband’s first love, and the Ghost of Crooners Past – an Aznavour-esque lounge lizard who is the embodiment of her libido.