Lack of good storyline.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Love fades and hatred settles in, holding firm for a very long time in Pierre Granier-Deferre's grim study of a marriage gone bad. Jean Gabin & Simone Signoret are a married couple whose relationship has outlasted their love for one another. They live in nearly mute misery, staying out of each other's way & exchanging notes as opposed to speaking. Gabin shows more affection, in fact ALL of his affection, toward a stray cat than to his wife. Signoret, a one-time acrobat injured years earlier & now saddled with a permanent limp exacts a terrible revenge on both Gabin and his cat. Granier-Deferre peppers the film with a fair amount of symbolism, but it's never muddy. It's quite clear that the decline of Gabin's and Signoret's relationship coincides with the gentrification of their neighborhood. Their house is the last on the block slated for demolition. An astounding, brilliantly acted movie and a very harsh look at just how nasty one human can be toward another. Philippe Sarde did the haunting music score.

This is hardly what you would call a film of action, in fact all the director could muster was a couple of shots from a pistol resulting in one dead moggie ! No, it's a film destined to a limited audience, and, even worse, is pessimistic and gloomy. A bit of a shame because Pierre Granier-Deferre has produced some more interesting stuff than this. However, it is watchable if you like the main actors, Jean Gabin and Simone Signoret, which I do. Their performance ( and the cat's ) makes the film just about watchable. Jean Gabin and Simone Signoret's couple has been flagging for a while, he does not love her any more and gives all his affection to this famous cat, whilst SS is getting more and more irate....alors, ce qui devait arriver, arriva .... she shoots the cat ! The gloominess of the film is compounded by the fact that they live in a neighbourhood which is gradually being demolished day by day to make place for high rise blocks, and their old house stands out like a sore thumb amongst the ruins. There is little human dialogue in the film ( but Gabin does seek some solace from a neighbour lady friend ), there is some slow-motion cat dancing on scaffolding and various futile attempts by Signoret to start conversation. In summary, it is well acted, these two are "monstres sacrés" from French cinema so I think the film is worth watching for their performance. If I am not mistaken it was made in the western Paris suburbs, either near Colombes or the Courbevoie/Puteaux area which has been transformed into La Défense business complex. For this reason alone the film is an interesting record of a long demolished area of the Paris suburbs. Also on the positive side, picture and sound quality are excellent.

Depressing but mesmerizing, this movie is like a horrible traffic accident - you know it's going to be gruesome, but you can't look away because you MUST know what happened to these people. The acting - in fact the entire film - is typically French, grittily realistic, yet artistically satisfying. No pie-in-the-sky happy ending. People are cruel sons of guns who can't even love without corruption. Deal with it. Simone Signoret's wild eyes as she cuts up her husband's prized newspapers ("Look what you have done, Kitty!") will stick with you for years afterward. I know. I saw it in the theater when it came out. There was a tag line for this film, one of the best I've heard, since it summarizes the plot exactly: "A love-hate relationship so strong it destroyed everything - the man, the woman - even the cat."

Elderly couple. Husband has nothing to communicate to his wife any more. Wife still longs for some affection. Only cat gets affection. Wife shoots cat. Husband even more alienated.My wife and I were watching this movie on TV. Our cats were sitting on our laps, happily purring. "A very profound movie about man-cat relationship", I remarked. "Actually it is more about the relationship between humans, or the lack of it", my wife replied. Of course, she was right.