From French writer-director Daniéle Thompson, a comedy of discontent, a comedy of attempted self-transformation, a light entertainment with darker undertones. The way station for three principal intertwined plotlines, on the titular swanky boulevard in the 8th Arrondissement of Paris, is the Bar des Théâtres, a "microcosm" composed of the coming-and-going artists, musicians, and theater people, as well as the man on the street, and a place of employment for a waifish newcomer from the provinces (Cécile de France, full of goofy charm if a trifle too conscious of it), the first female employee in this bastion of Old World tradition. All three plotlines, in a frankly corny contrivance, come to a head on the same evening; and because it's a comedy in the commonest sense, the discontent in each case works its way around to a positive change, a bit too neatly for the film's own good. Still, the level of culture in the film, the level of civilization, offers the American moviegoer a rare refuge and respite. Only the French (and maybe, sometimes, to some degree, Woody Allen) could be at such ease, in a completely commercial divertissement, bandying about the names of Simone de Beauvoir, Brancusi, Braque, Beethoven, Feydeau, Resnais, et al. Nowhere else could a sight gag set its sights so high: a tableau of our waifish waitress seated in a row alongside five auditioning actors done up in the guise of Jean-Paul Sartre. With Valérie Lemercier, Albert Dupontel, Laura Morante, Claude Brasseur, Christopher Thompson (the filmmaker's son and her collaborator on the script), and a bilingual Sydney Pollack. (2006) — Duncan Shepherd