Jean-Charles Tacchella's overpraised love story is a profusion of casual, cursory observations of family life; and in the abundance there are plenty of amusing moments, and many more that are smug, lazy-minded, and banal. It seems a nice idea to do a movie whose entire, large population is tied together by blood or wedlock, and whose major events are red-letter-day gatherings of the clan. But really, Tacchella is concerned only about two family members, a pair of cousins-by-marriage who defy propriety and blithely carry on a big romance under the very noses of their respective spouses. (There is a tough-looking, tomboyish, misanthropic adolescent who seems interesting, but she eventually succumbs to the movie's wry knowingness when, growing up at last, she burbles, "Last week I had sex with a boy, and it was terrific!") It is difficult to see what the two supercilious lovers, Victor Lanoux and Marie-Christine Barrault, have to be so proud of. Their mates, though, are portrayed as such ninnies that they certainly have nothing to be guilty about. The view of romance in the film is determinedly down-to-earth; lower even than that, it seems to be rooted in pop slogans: "You only live once," and "Get it together," and "Do your own thing," and "Let it all hang out." (1976) — Duncan Shepherd