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This is one of the most accomplished films I've seen from France in a while. French cinema always presents risky situations. Hollywood, in search of ideas, sometimes turns into other films for American consumption under disguises, where the original idea is totally changed, or presented in such an idiotic way, that probably the new film derived has nothing to do with the original one.Director Coline Serreau presents a story about today's society, where there's always no time to pay attention to things, let alone go to the aid of someone who's being victimized on the street. The Vidals, a bourgeois couple are a typical example of people so preoccupied in their own little game; they have no time to help the young woman who is beaten to a pulp in front of their eyes.Well, actually, Mme. Vidal has a conscience. She protests to Paul, her husband; he couldn't care less. She goes to the hospital where the victim is under a coma, trying to put things right. She then becomes obsessed with the situation. At least she is a decent, if somehow tardy Samaritan.Noemi, the woman who's been beaten has her own sad story. Played with conviction by Rashida Brakni, she puts a plan to avenge herself against the people that got her in the present situation and tried to kill her.The interplay between Noemi and Mme. Vidal, also played earnestly by Catherine Frot, is one of the best combinations of wits in a film.The film never lets up. Showing a sure hand, Ms Serreau gives us an enjoyable film and a feminist take on the way things are done when a woman decides to say enough to all kinds of abuses she has been put all her life.
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