Le jour des rois

A refined, intelligent and occasionally bitter comedy which derives its subject-matter from an everyday situation which is far from spectacular at first sight. Three elderly sisters spend an Epiphany Sunday together. As if it is a ritual, a strictly determined programme is completed.The middle-class surroundings are finely sketched with restrained satire. A bitter battle is fought out between the three women in an apparently civilised and polite way, fed by decades of resentment. Under its calm and unspectacular exterior, the film is extremist and filled with (verbal) violence. Only the fourth sister, Marie-Louise, has been able to escape the stifling blood bond by succumbing to amateur dramatics; she is, as it were, the concrete fantasy of escape of the other three.The quality and attraction of the film is based entirely on the very realistic and sometimes very keen dialogues and the academic acting of the players; literally and metaphorically old hands. The three sisters are played by actresses with an impressive career behind them. Danielle Darrieux (Armande) worked with e.g. Ophüls, Micheline Presle (Germaine and her twin sister Marie-Louise) played in films by Grémillon and Paulette Dubost (Suzanne) was apprenticed to patron Jean Renoir. This star cast was augmented with Robert Lamoureux (Albert, Armande’s husband and the young love Germaine) and Michel Galabru (the obstinate husband of Suzanne).The style of the film is sometimes close to theatre, Chekhov, but Treilhou found her tutors mainly in cinema: Ozu, Dreyer and Rohmer.