Clémentine and Sébastien are a young couple who have allowed
themselves to become ground down by the tedious routine of work and family.
Still, even that is preferable to the nightmare that ensues when Sébastien's
mother Marie-France turns up and decides to move in with them. It seems
that Sébastien's father Henri has been cheating on his wife, with
the result that his younger mistress is now pregnant with his child.
Incensed by this turn of events, Marie-France behaves like an unruly teenager,
bringing chaos and frayed nerves aplenty to her adopted household.
Clémentine and Sébastien are at a complete loss as to what
to do - just how do you deal with an adolescent sixty-year-old? Henri's
belated paternity and the emotional upheaval that comes with it seem to signal
some kind of generational switch. Now it is time for the children to
tell their parents how to live their lives - not that it will do them much
good...
The cinema of Japan is noteworthy for its purity, subtlety and visual impact. The films of Ozu, Mizoguchi and Kurosawa are sublime masterpieces of film poetry.
Science-fiction came into its own in B-movies of the 1950s, but it remains a respected and popular genre, bursting into the mainstream in the late 1970s.
Since the 1920s, Hollywood has dominated the film industry, but that doesn't mean American cinema is all bad - America has produced so many great films that you could never watch them all in one lifetime.