As with all French farces, improbable coincidence and impeccable timing are key to the second part of Lucas Belvaux's ingenious exercise in genre revisionism.
François Morel's conviction that wife Ornella Muti is conspiring against him with his children, his doctor and the police has an irresistible paranoid logic that makes it both more eccentric and engaging than her suspicion that he's having an affair with either her fellow teacher, Dominique Blanc, or his secretary, Valerie Mairesse.
But while some of the set-pieces are funny, Morel's asides to his dictaphone soon become irksome, and contrivance comes to dominate the final third.
Moreover, Muti's liaison with Blanc's husband seems to have been set up solely to be reinterpreted in the series' final instalment, out on December 5. Amusing, but somewhat strained.