This film is so similar in feel to Un Coeur En Hiver that it feels like a sequel of sorts. Of course, it is by the same director, stars the same actress and has the same writers.The problem with this film is that it is a watered-down version of the story. If UCEH is the meat, NEMA is the soup made with the bones of that film.UCEH had drama, psychological struggle, a love-triangle (of sorts), a serious talent and career under jeopardy, a business and business relationships being threatened, strong feelings and major pain. This, in comparison, is much less the sequel of that film than an aftertaste. Instead of a professional violinist we have a part-time typist, part-time cashier at a bakery. Instead of deep emotions and fire, we get some warmth, instead of conflict we have nothing. Nelly divorces her husband with total coldness, yet he just shrugs it off. I'm fine with a character having a cold heart, but this film is a world without emotion. Nelly feels nothing towards her husband, the husband is indifferent to his wife leaving him, she doesn't react much when she sees him with another woman, not a hint of residual feelings, no jealousy, seller's remorse, nothing. Nelly's feelings towards Arnaud are weak, his feelings towards her are also not that strong beyond attraction, but no jealousy whatsoever. Nelly's feelings towards her boyfriend are weak (she doesn't want to move in with him) and his feelings towards her are just as weak ("You don't want to move in with me? Good night. Don't call me again. Have a good life. We're finished here. Cheque please.").The characters are all variants of the same person, all somewhat cold, distant, calculated and passionless. I can understand the lack of fire from a dying marriage, but not from a new relationship considering living together. Break ups, divorces, hookups, crises, meetings, attractions, all have the same level of intensity - 3/10. No peaks, no lows. Just a slow cook form start to end.There is no change of circumstances, no twist and ultimately no plot beyond an attraction of an older man to a pretty woman typing his dictation.

I watched my first Claude Sautet film two nights ago. It was titled Cesar and Rosalie.My response was intense. In fact, intense doesn't even cover it. Make that uber intense. Cesar and Rosalie was absolute perfection. I had never seen anything quite like that on the screen before and was left completely infatuated with Claude Sautet. Mr. Sautet had somehow worked himself into my very biochemistry because my enchantment demanded to be fed. I had to see another Claude Sautet film as soon as possible.Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud was the one I got a hold of. All day long I looked forward to seeing it. I couldn't wait. But, alas...Oh, well. It was so lovely having Mr. Sautet up there on a pedestal. Even if only for a short while. But now I realize he was a fellow human. Sigh. A wonderful filmmaker yes, but human and thus inevitably flawed.I was disappointed in this film -- Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud. Most especially with the casting. Sorry, but NONE of the men were sympatico. Neither in their physical presence nor in their personalities. At least not in my opinion. And that sucked a lot of vitality right out of the film.Michel Serrault did not have a scintilla of masculine appeal. I never bought that Beart was in the least attracted to him. Merely using him as a distraction from the pain of her divorce instead.I thought it was kind of interesting that the actor who played the editor with whom Beart became romantically involved bore a physical resemblance to Serrault. In fact, he very much looked like what Michel Serrault might have looked like back when he was a young man with dark hair himself.I think Sautet may have fashioned the resemblance deliberately. Why? I don't know.The actor who played Beart's husband was also physically completely nondesript. Or at least presented as such.Again, all of this served to rob the film of true romantic tension and, therefore, made it difficult to really buy into the story line.But it was still a wonderful film, of course. Full of complexity, witty and intriguing dialogue and well worth watching. Just not perfect. JMO.

I guess the main reason for "Nelly" to be one of the most popular Eruopean movies of the last years is the presence of the Goddess Beart in each and every one of the sequences: her eyes, her mouth, her perfection. Without any make-up, without wonderful dresses... she does not need anything but her natural beauty to make Mr. Arnaud to fall in love her. He hires her as a personal assistant while he's writing his memoirs, but she'll end up being his closest confident. The connection between both of them is neither sexual nor platonic... it's something else. Maybe they're just kindred spirits that meet each other at the wrong time: he knows she's too young and beautiful to stay with him. It doesn't matter if she'd be willing to begin a relationship with Arnaud, 'cause the truth is that he won't let her beauty to fade in the company of an old man which has anything but memories.This is a sober and reflexive movie, that doesn't live up to its world wide fame (in my opinion); but, as I said before, the presence of Emmanuelle Beart worth watching it.*My rate: 7/10

When you gotta go you gotta go and if Claude Sautet had to go he certainly went in style. He gave us some of the finest and most durable films in late 20th century French cinema - Vincent, Francois, Paul et les Autres, En Cour en Hiver and so many more, films we can watch again and again with renewed pleasure and he signed off with a doozy. It is, of course, a cliché that only the French know how to handle the man-woman relationship in all its nuances, unorthodoxy, etc, but one worth repeating. Its all too easy to imagine the clumsiness with which modern English/US directors would have handled the older man/younger woman situation that lies at the heart of this story but I'm ready to bet plenty of twelve-to-seven that none would have brought the delicacy of touch, subtlety that is synonymous with Sautet. When we talk of a 'mood' piece we think of Chekhov and Sautet invokes the Russian master in spinning out of thin air a fragile, gossamer-thin tacit understanding between his two leads. Beart is almost too impossibly beautiful to be true and she needs to be the fine actress she is to get past the handicap of classical features while Serrault is a consummate actor still turning out great performances. A word too about the support, Michele Laroque, a stand-up comedienne in her spare time, brings the same solid support here as she did later in Francis Veber's 'Le Placard'. I can pay this movie no higher compliment than to bracket it with 'Brief Encounter', another masterpiece of unconsummated love that is still enchanting audiences fifty years on, as Nelly and Mr. Arnaud surely will be.