This is our old friend the Catalyst plot in which a stranger insinuates himself into a community, group, and causes mayhem until by the end the screen is littered with skeletons emerging from closets. Guillaume Canet has added spin to this trite plot by having the catalyst not coming INTO the group but LEAVING it. In short a long established group of friends spend a month each year on vacation as the guest of Max, a self-made successful businessman. On the eve of this years vacation one of the group, Jean Dujardin, is involved in a horrific road accident that eventually proves terminal. The friends opt to go on vacation anyway on the grounds that they are impotent so far as practical help goes. This decision, natch, unleashes all sorts of revelations, home truths, violence etc. Canet is a highly accomplished writer director and whilst this entry lacks the thrills and tension of Tell No One - which was adapted from a best selling novel rather than an Original screenplay as here - he still draws outstanding performances from the entire ensemble. Catch it if you can.

In Paris, a truck runs over the biker Ludo (Jean Dujardin) while he is driving home after spending the night snorting cocaine in a night-club. His long-time friends visit him in the hospital where he is in coma. The group is ready to travel on the annual vacation to the house of the successful businessman Max Cantara (François Cluzet) nearby Bordeaux and they decide to travel anyway and return when Ludo is better.

The physiotherapist Vincent Ribaud (Benoît Magimel),who is married with a child, tells to his fifteen year-old friend and godfather of his son, Max, that he wants to talk to him in private and they have lunch together in Max's restaurant. Vincent discloses to him that he has fallen in love with him. Max reacts to his words and Vincent asks him to keep the secret and forget their conversation.

Along the days, each friend has a little secret while Max is near nervous breakdown with Vincent. Until the day that Max's friend Jean-Louis (Joël Dupuch) tells the truth about their little lies and friendship.

"Les Petits Mouchoirs" is a French movie about friends' reunion in the same style of the American "The Big Chill" by Lawrence Kasdan or the British "Peter's Friends" by Kenneth Branagh. The movie has great performances but the prolix story is too long, a corny conclusion and deserved to be better and better for such wonderful cast. I liked this movie, but many sub-plots and the conclusion should have been shortened or deleted in the edition. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Até a Eternidade" ("Until the Eternity")

Let me start of by saying: Do not watch this because you want to see Jean Dujardin! Since he won the Oscar a couple of months ago, I'm pretty sure the demand on his movies has been increased. But this is not a Dujardin vehicle. While his character is pivotal to the whole story, he himself will not appear in it for a long period of time. I didn't count the minutes, but his screen presence does not warrant you to watch it for him alone.

Having said that, I do hope you watch it for what it is and all the other wonderful french actors that are in it. One of them being his "partner-in-crime" in his newest movie (L'Infidels). The story consists of every character having something inside them, wanting to burst out. Some are subtle about it and some are not. I think the character who is the loudest might feel to be the most annoying one, but the actor walks the fine line of still making him sympathetic enough for us to care. A really good drama, that will find it's audience.