Earning Amalric a French Cesar for Best Newcomer, this leisurely study of Parisian twentysomethings (subtitled Paul Dedalus' Journey) has its moments, but there are far too few of them to justify the running time.
This is one of those films populated exclusively by people who exist only in the rarefied circles in which directors with intellectual pretensions move. Amalric plays Paul, a 29-year-old teacher who can't quite bring himself either to quit his job and complete his doctorate or finish with the woman (Devos) he's been dating out of habit for the last decade.
While he ponders his options, he makes a pass at his best friend's fiancee (Denicourt), sleeps with a mentally fragile woman (Jeanne Balibar) who wants him to supervise her thesis, gets slapped off by his cousin's new squeeze (a woefully underused Chiara Mastroianni) and gets into a tizzy at school because a one-time buddy turned deadly rival (Michel Vuillermoz) has just been promoted over him.
What's puzzling is that there is nothing about this guy that would have these otherwise intelligent women falling over themselves to bed him. Amalric deserves much credit for creating such a self-obsessed loser, but here comes off second-best in just about every scene he shares with Devos or Denicourt.