review for Antoine et Antoinette on AllMovie

Jacques Becker's thoroughly delightful romantic comedy casually introduces its characters and their intersecting lives and concerns before injecting a note of tension to the proceedings: a winning lottery ticket is misplaced. Pierre Montazek's camera glides in and out of various locations-a print shop, a department store, a food market, and an apartment building, all the while accumulating details about a large cast of characters that will come to fruition with the crisis of the missing ticket. Antoinette (the lovely Claire Maffei) is content with her affable husband and their modest lives, but in postwar France, Antoine (intense Roger Pigaut) sees others being able to afford finer possessions and nicer apartments. Their grocer, M. Roland (oily Noel Roquevert) sees an opportunity to make one of his favorite customers his well-kept mistress. The film flows effortlessly toward a happy conclusion with a number of highlights: a tense confrontation between Antoine and Roland which speaks volumes about their characters, a piano tuner at the lottery office providing a discordant soundtrack that underscores Antoine's state of mind, and Antoinette using her lipstick when the couple's only pencil breaks to write their lottery winnings wish list on a mirror. It's not an especially profound experience, but it's one of those French film, like Jean Vigo's L'Atalante, that effortlessly illustrates the glories of love amid urban chaos.