Such a frustrating disappointment

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The title of Sautet's film is a bit of a tease - the fairer title might seem to be "Cesar and Rosalie and David," or even some other subgroup of the three. The chosen title prompts us to regard the relationship of Cesar and Rosalie as a normative benchmark and David as a threat, as such taking the viewpoint of Cesar - a self-made man overawed to have Rosalie as a partner, but not knowing how to express it except by aggressively filling every silence with his own voice and by relentlessly reciting how much money he spent on this and that (Yves Montand is just sensational in the role). David (Sami Frey) returns after five years in America, still pining for his old love, and through his youth and handsomeness and (as Cesar puts it) greater cool seeming to stand a chance of getting her back. Cesar rapidly succumbs to obsessiveness, and then to outright violence, but even as his actions threaten to push Rosalie away rather than secure her, his fraught interactions with David are actually becoming more meaningful to him, perhaps to both men. For a while, the film seems rather offputtingly dominated by Cesar and David, even to the point of underlying misogyny, but by the end Sautet has repositioned that impression to a degree that seems quietly radical (the movie stops short of any sexual implications between the two men, but then it's mostly discreet about sexuality throughout). In the end, Rosalie is nothing more than pure image, observed from a distance, captured in a final freeze frame, making the point that perhaps that's all she ever was, and that the apparent lack of attention to her inner life in the earlier stages wasn't an oversight, but a quiet rebuke of our expectations of women in cinema, and beyond it. The fact that Rosalie is embodied by Romy Schneider, in all her mesmerizing reticence, dares us to see beyond the image, while simultaneously acknowledging we may not think to.

Fine piece of acting. Rosalie character is not very extraverted, but Romy Schneider delivers a good performance, subtle and convincing as a woman hesitating all the time. Montand is awesome, probably because Cesar may be very much like him in real life. Maybe Frey's character is the less convincing: not clear why he hesitates all the time to win her. OK, this is where the cinema and real life part. One reality: has anyone noticed how quickly women were sent in 1972 to serve ice, prepare coffee or cook?The ending is predictable, somehow. However, did she know the two were living together? If she did, then she will hesitate forever between the two. If she did not, she chose one, and one only.

The acting in this movie is excellent--particularly Yves Montand as the middle aged scrap dealer. David is also well-played as are all the other supporting players. But the character of Rosalie was just confusing and flaky and this tended to pull the movie down from time to time. Her character just didn't make sense--acting impulsively and without clear motivation. It was like many of her moves were based on a whim and that made it hard to care about her or see what David or Cesar saw in her (other than her great looks). Yes I could see it would be tough to love two people at the same time but the ways she reacted just defied logic. It's really a shame, as a re-write of the script could have made this a MUCH better film.

I saw "Cesar and Rosalie" at the Jerusalem Cinematheque. I had only seen Claude Sautet's later movies (which I loved), and was unsure what to expect. The cinema was packed full of people, and some of the older members of the audience were laughing out loud almost immediately at Yves Montand's antics. I was a bit more restrained. But it didn't take long for me to find myself laughing as well. And not only me; it seemed like everyone there was in good spirits, young and old alike. Yves Montand's acting was incredible, Romy Schneider is terribly desirable, and the film just floated along. Definitely worth seeing, both if you're a Claude Sautet fan or if you want a charming movie about the interesting relationship which develops between the movie's three protagonists.