The Rules of the Game

Plot, character, and so on are enough. I enjoyed the heck out of RULES OF THE GAME.

I don't know why, but I find it much easier to identify with pre-War French aristocrats than English aristocrats of nearly any era. Perhaps it's because the English were on top for so long, while one senses that after Waterloo, the French had to settle for self-delusion. These people don't put me off because I know that their entire world is about to come crashing down around them.

THE RULES OF THE GAME features a character who feels passionately about collecting musical instruments and devices. In a major scene, he opens the curtains on his prized possession, a complex musical machine featuring an array of players whose music goes from harmony to discord and back again. At the machine's apex, we see the figure of a nude woman, painted reclining against a hazy backdrop. Just as this depiction of feminine sexuality serves as the machine's focal point, so feminine sexuality (and masculine reaction to and interaction with it) serves as the focal point of a film in which a multitude of chracters bang and blow on their respective instruments in a sometimes melodic, sometimes cacophanous display.

This picture has so many interweaving plots, subplots, and concerns that it'd take 5,000 words just to describe them all. This could lead to a bewildering tangle of narratives, but THE RULES OF THE GAME creates such interesting and diverse characters that we have no problem keeping them and their stories straight. It helps when the film has no wasted frames.as I mentioned before, there are no wasted frames. Since there's always something happening, our minds don't have time to wander. Instead, we're forced to focus, to keep up, and the effort proves to be worth the reward. Be it keeping an eye on the background characters while the foreground players attract the most attention or simply enjoying the precision with which doors open and close and actors make their entrances and exits, THE RULES OF THE GAME keeps us entertained while conducting us ever deeper into the minds and hearts of its people. It climaxes with a bang, it closes with a wallop, and it entertains from beginning to end.

Even the most hypofrancophiliac among us couldn't help but enjoy it.