"Henri Boulanger wants to die, for reasons too personal to be explained here...(H)e ends up hiring a contract killer to send him to happier rubber-stamping grounds. While waiting for the killer to do his job, however, Henri makes the mistake of sipping, for the first time in his life, a whisky, and finds the courage to encounter the opposite sex eye-to-eye, also for the first time. Everything would be ready for setting up a family. Unfortunately, the killer's contract cannot be canceled. The film moves from everyday realism through melodrama towards a surprise ending with a cinematic structure swinging between Dreyer and Melville without touching either of them in any way." So speaks the enfant terrible of Finland, Aki Kaurismäki (see The Match Factory Girl, May 5), of his latest ironic rumination on the human condition, written especially for Jean-Pierre Léaud, the actor who made angst a French word.