Abandoning the epic scale and grandiose themes of his award winning drama Les Miserables, Claude Lelouch returns to the kind of wry, intimate drama that has been his trademark since he found international fame with A Man And A Woman. Now, 30 years further into an illustrious and often controversial career, he shows no signs of flagging. This is a shrewd, amusing, and beautifully put together picture that ranks among his best.
The title might grab attention, but the subtitle An Inhuman Comedy comes close closer to summing up this story about a vengeful and ultimately tragic practical joke. Playing the prank is doctor Martines (Lelouch's wife) who tells healthy businessman Tapie that he is dying to pay him back for dumping her years before. She then informs terminally ill actor-turned-cop Luchini that he's fine, in order to see if positive thinking can affect a cure.
For a non-actor making his debut, Tapie (the disgraced politician and ex-Marseilles soccer chief) looks as though he's been in movies all his life and is much more believable than Luchini, largely because the latter's resemblance to Tony Blair is so spooky.
The subplot involving a tramp with the voice of an angel gets in the way, but the teenage romance (featuring Lelouch's daughter) and the cemetery sequences, in which conwoman Anouk Aimee vamps rich widowers, neatly prove that when it comes to sexual chemistry you're never too young or too old to conduct a few experiments.