Claude Sautet helms this entangling psychological drama with great skill. This always interesting edgy low-key drama ratchets up the tension and gloom as it tells the story of a lonely man trying to save his business and also make a love connection. — Dennis Schwartz

Sautet is remarkably successful at smoothly shifting our attention away from the obligatory material aspirations and dealings of his characters and toward their human feelings, the responsibility they feel (though they may not express it) for one another. He ends the film not with any resolution or reassurance that our dreams and ambitions can work out, but with a gentle, empathetic sense of half-hopeful resignation. The characters cannot even come close to doing all they would really like to, for themselves or each other; but despite that disappointment, they will do what they can, and there is some small, unspoken glory in that. — Christopher McQuain