This is pretty inane with many conversations leading absolutely nowhere. Someone wrote a script and forgot about the plot. It's like recording conversations at work and making a movie of it – there's even a company picnic at the end. The boss's wife is weird in that she tries to set up a date for her husband with another female co-worker. She herself goes for another man in the office but unfortunately nothing comes from that too. There is a suppressed sexuality which should have been less suppressed, as this would have added needed zest to this yawn of a film. I kept noticing mundane things, like why are they drinking tea when they are in France. I was hoping for some kind of conflict and story to materialize somewhere in all this dialogue. It's all simply too DULL.

'Un monde presque paisible' (Almost Peaceful) is a touching little film that keeps its story so quietly gentle that the effect is genuinely memorable. Director and screenwriter Michel Deville based this engrossing movie on a novel by Robert Bober: it is a unique vision and sharing of how Jews recovered from WW II.Set in 1946 in Paris, the owner of a tailoring business seeks out Jews who have either returned from the camps or have been in hiding, or were part of the Resistance, who by luck escaped the fate of so many others, or were outcast otherwise during the horrors of WW II and offers them employment and emotional support. These are healthy people physically: emotionally the damage is deep and requires tender nurturing to start the road to health. The story unfolds slowly and allows us to witness the means by which each of these victims help each other heal and regain self confidence and learn to live in a world without the fear of extermination. The movement of the story is one of emerging trust and the director and actors each bring to the concept a fine sense of history and of the manner in which fellowman can coexist with a little help from their friends.The cast is uniformly excellent and the atmospheric cinematography by Andre Diot is stunningly beautiful and reminiscent of the post war France period. The musical score is solely dependent on string quartets and matches the intimacy of the message of the film. In French with English subtitles. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp

"Almost Peaceful (Un monde presque paisible)" uniquely focuses on a slice of time hitherto unexplored in film. It's set in Paris in 1946 as co-workers in a tailor shop just try to have normal lives. But they are only physically recovered. They are each survivors in different ways, whether from the camps, hidden, accidentally escaped, or joined the Resistance, or, for the non-Jews, compromised with the occupiers. All are youthful (the most likely demographic to have survived), whether during the war they were children, teens, young adults, or had started families. They are just trying to pick up their pieces, re-learning the quotidian. But the tiniest things bring back uncontrollable memories, as powerfully as Proust's madeleine to use a French cultural comparison. Particularly noteworthy are the Jews' relationships with gentiles. Where in most movies somehow all Frenchmen were members of the Resistance, here they recognize their informers, or the apathetic stand-byers, those who had gladly taken over their apartments, etc. etc. And those who think that it doesn't matter anymore and accidentally stumble into more emotions than they bargained for. Over the gradual unfolding of the film, each fully developed and emotionally damaged character very individually adapts to breathing more freely and assertively and we cheer each quiet, little step in their progress. The movie serves as a beautiful illustration of why so many survivors' stories didn't come out for another 50 years. While it is based on an autobiographical novel, a neighbor of mine who was a child in France in 1946 supported its realism.

[See the IMDb home page for this film for the cast names. They aren't known much in the U.S.]Most movies (and stories) about Jews and the Holocaust take place either during the war or very long after when events combine to force recollection. Sometimes such latter-day stirrings lead to centrally critical flashbacks as in the currently showing "Rosenstrasse." French veteran director and writer Michel Deville has a different approach in "Almost Peaceful," one that works rather well.The time is the France of 1946 and a fairly flourishing tailor shop is run by Albert, married to Lea. They have two little kids, a boy and a girl. During the war the Jewish couple suffered separation, Albert in hiding in a house and Lea with their first child secreted away on a farm.Albert has a big heart and his shop has workers who survived the camps or hid during the terror. Most are Jewish. One young man fought in the Resistance. An older fellow was liberated from the death camps but his wife has not been found and he knows that she surely is lost. Lea, believing Albert is no longer enchanted with her, might go for a fling with the seldom smiling tailor but he is still married in his heart. He is sad but not despondent - in his own way he seeks to regain some joy in just being alive.This eclectic admixture embraces several young men, one a writer-in-promise, the other something of a certifiable klutz with two left hands and a big heart. A bespoke craftsman he never will be.The title of the movie reflects the reality the people in the tailor shop encounter every day. The Nazis are gone, collaborators have been punished but the "usual suspects," those dependable anti-Semites of the stripe who railroaded Dreyfus, are still around. One of the young men seeks permanent papers from a police inspector to be coldly told that the officer will do everything in his power to thwart the guy's application. He leaves the place and confidently remarks to a cop outside the front door that it's a new day in France when a Jew can walk OUT of a police station. That encapsulates the experience of not only the film's characters but so many other Jewish survivors in France and other countries. There is greater protection, less peril but...they are still rejected as different by many.The charm of "Almost Peaceful" is how some very ordinary people begin life anew after very extraordinary experiences. The tattoos on several of the characters' wrists are barely visible, just enough to remind viewers of their ordeal. Children - born, expected and hoped for - play a central role in the film. The excellent, unaffected acting prevents what might have been a cloy plot from ever being so. There's a lot of subtle charm and good humor here as the tailor shop crew and their friends carefully but optimistically renew a vibrant life after a deadly storm.The film ends, appropriately, satisfyingly at a Jewish summer camp where kids experience fun, games and as much food as they want. Their playful laughter is the story's fine coda.By the way, IMDb lists the composer correctly as Giovanni Bottesini and has a page for him with no information. Do other "film score composers" such as Beethoven and Mozart have their own nearly blank IMDb pages? I think someone didn't realize that Bottesini, perhaps the finest composer ever for the double-bass, died in 1869.8/10