Gérard Depardieu once again shows his extraordinary range, this time as a Parisian professional in the throes of deciding whether or not to leave his wife for his mistress. At the same time, as the father of a little boy (played by the director's young son), he finds his lumbering presence and natural aggression keeping him from blending into the "landscape" of family life. "The chief victim of his own desire for solitude and insatiable need for consolation, the Pialat male is also obsessively afraid of losing what little he has left. Le Garçu is entirely devoted to this horror of loss . . . Pialat's art, which consists of successive compressions and revelations, is that of an illusionist of the real . . . [His] urge to return to the autobiographical vein arose . . . from a desire to explore the event that most deeply affected his final years: the birth of his first child" (Frédéric Bonnaud, Film Comment).