Becker's droll satire plays out on several uneasy social borders-between city and country folk, family and outside community, men and women. Filmed in stunning shadows, it is haunting in its mixture of lighthearted and gallows humor. A city slicker departs Paris for the wilds-that is, the provinces-and arrives in fear and trembling at the home of his country family, the Goupis. What he discovers is a clan of eccentrics out of You Can't Take It With You. His arrival is easily eclipsed by the birth of a calf in the barn, and thus he enters on a house empty save for a kitten...and a corpse. And so begins a murder mystery that pits cousin against cousine, Goupi against Goupi, and all against the outside world. Pierre Véry's script is delightfully literary and never misses a turn, beginning with the characters' nicknames designated by temperament and established by time-from Teaspoon, the harridan lady of the house who is eventually given a taste of her own medicine; to cousin Tonkin, alienated ex-marine longing for the blue skies of Indochina. (JB)