ON SCREEN

starring Jean Rochefort, Nicole Garcia, Annie Girardot and Lila Kedrova; written by Philippe de Broca and Alexandre Mnouchkine; directed by de Broca.

Years of practice haven't brought Edouard Choiseul (Jean Rochefort), a professional pianist, closer to perfecting the one art that is his true passion -- womanizing. As his ex-wife (Annie Girardot) explains to him, he has slept with his wife's best friends and his best friends' wives and no one trusts him any longer. At first a farcial, light-hearted portrayal of an over extended, frantic womanizer, the film becomes a dramatic, often poignant probing of Edouard's moral and psychological dilemma.

Practice is a comedy-romance-farce-drama, a stringing together (better for pearls than for movies) that looks like a bargain but amounts to thinness in all departments (hyphenated-genre films typically try for multiple effects and end up delivering none). But de Broca (King of Hearts, Dear Inspector) overcomes this structural weakness by focusing on important and abiding human concerns -- fear of aging, jealousy, hypocrisy, sexual morality, and the value of love and family. The somewhat contrived plot is ultimately less important than the mood, which is wonderfully wistful and lyrical.