I loved this movie. Yes, I can understand that it is often opaque and may make you reach for the rewind a few times to understand what it was you were just seeing - yes, there are many characters and not too much explanation - but it's not more complicated than, say Funeral in Berlin or The Maltese Falcon.This is the sort of movie that people who think they might want to try a European movie should see - the clothes, the style, the characters, the stunning contemporary settings, the 85% explained plot, the beautiful women, the roles of jewels and mistresses, striving and excess, guilt and recrimination, forgiveness and imbalance, and an underworld pressing close up against a very haut monde. I think this and My Favorite Season are as good as anything Deneuve has ever done. Both are quite remarkable given that she has been in movies for over forty years. All the actors are quite remarkable - and Emmanuelle Seigner (whom you may remember from Frantic with Harrison Ford, Bitter Moon with Hugh Grant) is all slender strong beauty - and a wonderful blonde contrast with the older blonde, heavy-set/blowsy (in character) Deneuve.The movie completely jumps any moral compass headings - and yet somehow one doesn't mind. So even though you may feel you must watch it twice, you'd enjoy it both times. It's as cool and elegant a movie as I've ever seen. And yet almost as sad a movie as I've ever seen. It's wonderful.

The movie was fine. Only in French films do beautiful women have sex with ordinary looking guys. Having said that, in the 50 years I have been watching movies there has never been a more beautiful actress than Catherine Deneuve. And, in addition to her incredible beauty, she is a wonderful actress. So, even if the movie doesn't appeal to you, you can always appreciate a true beauty. Oh yes, by the way, I did enjoy the movie, too.

This film would get absolutely no attention otherwise. Story/plot are a convoluted mess; direction and editing are mediocre or worse. Production values are high, but that's pretty typical these days. Lurches from one jarring and opaque scene to another. Especially bizarre is a scene where Deneuve is quite abruptly shown on a train, drunkenly involved in a tough game of cards. Also a very annoying thread runs throughout the film, where various women are showing yelling at men who are bothering them "no leave me alone", then there's a jump to the next scene where they are in bed together.

I hate French movies. Hate them, hate them, hate them. All things being equal, you couldn't pay me to see a French movie. French dramas are dull, depressing films about people smoking cigarettes and talking about nothing in particular. And French comedies are like bad Jerry Lewis movies with subtitles. Nonetheless, I was dragged to see "Place Vendome" and was pleasantly surprised.This is a thriller about Marianne (Catherine Deneuve), the widow of a prominent Parisian jeweler who is involved in some shady deals before he commits suicide. Marianne is an alcoholic who spends 348 days a year voluntarily confined in a mental hospital. When she is out, she needs a nurse to look after her. When she is sober, her hands shake and she is frightened of everything.Before her husband dies, he tells her about some hot rocks stashed in the house. After he dies, she tries to sell them so she doesn't have to sell her husband's business or go bankrupt. Everyone is too frightened to buy them, but plenty of people want to take them.She also finds out her husband had a mistress named Nathalie (Emmanuelle Seigner)who looks exactly like she did twenty years ago. It turns out they have more than that in common. They are both intimately acquainted with the jewelry business, legal and otherwise. There is not a man that one has slept with that the other has not. And they are both in over their heads on both the business and romantic fronts.What I really liked about this film was that it reminded me so much of Hitchcock's romantic thrillers, particularly "Vertigo". There is a scene at the beginning where Marianne has a breakdown in the middle of a stairwell while Richard Robbins' (or is it Bernard Herrmann's) swirling clarinet fugue score plays. This, I thought, was a wonderful homage to the bell-tower scenes in "Vertigo".There are faults of course. There is just too much coincidence to keep my disbelief suspended for long. And I really would have liked to see more of Nathalie. But overall, this is a stylish thriller from a country where I least expected it. 8 out of 10.