The Rules of the Game

A French aviator despairs that his true love was not present on the runway to receive him for his latest Trans Atlantic flight record. Together, along with his garrulous best friend, they attend a luxuriant weekend gathering at the girl's husband's country estate where carefree attitudes and hostilities between members of the upstairs and down lead to a tragic case of mistaken identity. Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game is a purposeful satire and a sublime, absolutely dazzing juggling act. Brilliantly written, impossibly staged, and memorably cast (with a good role thrown in for the director himself, the film is a timely indictment of the French class system on the eve of world war. **** out of ****