Irene (Margherita Buy) works for a company that evaluates luxury hotels. This means that you will see many luxury hotels over the course of the film, and they are indeed luxurious. Personal butlers, spa treatments, motorized curtains, palatial bathrooms, scented sheets — Irene sees all and judges all. (You almost feel sorry for her: it's hard to enjoy all that opulence when you're constantly on the lookout for flaws.) It also means that you will see her deal with the consequences of a (supremely cosseted) vagabond's life: no husband, no kids, few friends, and strained family relations. What you will not see is much in the way of story. A collection of carefully rendered details does not a movie make. There is a crisis of sorts, but it comes so late, and is surrounded by so many tangential bits (a sister's stalled sex life, a stranger's rambling speech on pornography), and is so limply resolved that it barely registers. Some might call such an experience reserved and tasteful; others, sedate to the point of dullness. Rather like Irene's hotels. (2014) — Matthew Lickona