Charlot47

Modest little comedy, ending in the traditional way with pairing off and a wedding.

The pairs are less traditional, perhaps. Michel Galabru, as a harassed executive in an Italian food company, has a delicious wife in Bernadette Lafont and a delicious secretary in Anicée Alvina. When the two women eventually meet, they hit it off perfectly and a happy ménage à trois is formed. The other male lead, Maurice Risch as the boss's nephew and titular groper, is married off compulsorily and his new household includes two Sicilian hit men assigned by his father-in-law to ensure he gets up to no new pranks.

While cheap sets and uninspired locations might suggest lack of imagination as well as budget, the music is sometimes cheerful and the four principals give good value.

A film going deeper than I expected, possibly too deep for some, into the human condition and, what surprised me in a work from such a secular country, beyond.

Rich and single in her early twenties in the French countryside, completely shattered by a string of traumatic events and collapsed weeping in the street, Céline is rescued by the village nurse Geneviève, divorced in her early twenties but one who has surmounted her own traumas and has the gifts to heal not just bodies but also troubled minds. After first getting Céline back into the normal routines of life, making the beds and cooking the lunch, she then initiates her into yogic exercices and meditation.

Here the story moves to another plane as unrealised gifts in Céline emerge. Not only is she healed but in her journey towards the infinite finds that her powers heal others. In traditional Catholic terminology she has become a saint whose presence produces spontaneous miracles beyond scientific explanation. While Geneviève remains well earthed, Céline departs to join some nuns in Asia.

Not the sort of plot one expects from contemporary France, shot through with a feel for beauty and enriched by magnificent music from Georges Delerue.