Manolo de Olveira who is 92 years young & still active in film,is to be commended for making this movie.This is really an art house film for those who know all about a film before they see it. The movie is 86 minutes long,It would have been a much clearer, more concise 60 minute Television exercise.The camera stands still with nothing happening for about a minute in many scenes.The last scenes with John Malkovich are in English, with no captioning, he speaks so low you cannot understand one word that he says.The audience is supposed to know before hand that the opening scenes are from an Obscure play by Ionesco & the scenes with Malkovich, the film being made is Ulysses. If you do not know from Ionesco you will not appreciate the beginning at all. I never understood Ulysses period. This is James Joyce's not Homer's.Michel Picoli a noted actor does a good job as the lead.Catherine Deneuve has a small role, since there were hardly any close ups I did not recognize who she was.I do like art-house type film but want to be able to understand them.I think I have more than 10 lines,Ratings: ** )out of 4) 52 points (out of 100) IMDb 4 (out of 10)

While parts of the film are quite interesting, there are so many problems with it that I would hesitate to recommend it to anyone. First, there are many prolonged scenes from plays in the beginning of the film that don't seem to help the picture along. It was as if they had the footage and used it as padding. A few shorter shots would have clearly sufficed to explain to the audience that the leading man was a respected leading man on the French stage. Second, the camera work was awfully strange. Some might find it artsy, while others might be annoyed by the seemingly amateurish style. For example, many times the camera was static and the characters walked in and out of the shot. I assume it was to give the movie the style of a play, but to me it just looked like they left the camera on and left it. Third, the movie did not appear to have an ending or much of a buildup to it. It just ended very abruptly. Fourth, and finally, the relationship with the man and his grandson seemed poorly developed and could have used more screen time.Overall, the film needed to be hashed out more and seemed greatly in need of editing and revisions.

It´s amazing how Manoel de Oliveira, who's 93 years old, accomplishes so much in this film using so little. The story is quite simple and there´s nothing very unusual about the characters. But the film captures the audience´s attention in a remarkable way. We get to know so much about the characters that sometimes we feel that we´re reading a book, when the author has pages and pages to tell everything about them. Michel Picoli plays a successful stage actor who, after losing wife, daughter and son-in-law in a car accident, learns to overcome his grief bringing his young grandson to live with him. Manuel de Oliveira doesn't use exciting camera angles nor spectacular takes. Everything is quite simple in his film. It's the simplicity of a master, who knows perfectly well what's he's doing. Acting is superlative. Picoli's work is on the level of the best performances of Ingmar Bergman's actors. And, of course, there's John Malkovich, with very few lines but an enormous intensity, in the role of an American film director who's shooting a movie version of James Joyce's "Ulysses". This is one of the most intelligent, delicate and touching films I've seen in many years.

Tedium taken to a level too boring to describe. Scenes go on and on ...... The actors look very uneasy at least I think they do as most of the time the light is very bad or the Director has set afocus on something removed from the characters.John Malkovitch is wasted and Piccoli seems bemused by the lack of any coherent storyline.An experience for insomniacs only.