La fin du jour

LA FIN DU JOUR oscillates effortlessly between parodic and melancholy storytelling. The plot revolves around retired actors, some of whom dwell on long-ago triumphs and others who can’t stop licking the wounds of still painful failures. Once a famous mime and cynical heartbreaker, Raphaël Saint-Clair (Louis Jouvet) arrives, utterly penniless, at a retirement home for actors. Apart from many former loves, he also encounters the stern mime Gilles Marny (Victor Francen), who has always suffered from a lack of recognition and whose wife took her own life because of an affair with Saint-Clair, and the owlish Cabrissade (Michel Simon), who targets everyone without exception with his coarse mockery, but with preference Marny and Saint-Clair. The central conflict of the three main characters is enriched by the whole ensemble of brilliant leading and supporting actors from France’s cinema scene, and thus the entire film seems like a stage set up first and foremost to pay tribute to the variety and art of acting. (re/fl)