This is the kind of film your savor—so full of life, creativity, and sly ironic commentary. Ophuls’s cinematic style is on full display, but so are his storytelling gifts, and his lightness of touch in adapting three stories by Guy de Maupassant keeps the film from becoming heavy-handed or overbearing, even as he toys with melodrama, broad social comedy, and caricature. Ophuls weaves together characters from all walks of life and shows how, despite their vast differences in social status, income, and respectability, all have in common the fundamental essence of life, which compels them to pursue their desires, sometimes to less-than-joyful ends. (DVD)