AllMovie

Meet the Celliers: despite their appearances as an ordinary and seemingly unremarkable French family, a host of severe dysfunctions linger just beneath the surface that continue to upset their lives and threaten to tear everyone apart. Patriarch Henry (Patrick Chesnais), an ex-corporate manager, evinces signs of extreme, multi-leveled regression; his wife Mady (Charlotte Rampling), a sexagenarian housewife, spreads wicked gossip about their two girls; daughter Alice (Mathilde Seigner, still rebounding from two abortions, obsessively paints drug-addled Madonnas; and that's only the beginning. The family's future takes an unusual turn when a mysterious stranger, the jaded, loner policeman Jacques (Olivier Marchal) turns up and wields dramatic influence over everyone. This newcomer succeeds in drawing out long buried neuroses and hang-ups and exacerbating virtually every conflict in the household.