Once again having seen and enjoyed a fine film I turn to these pages and find it inexplicable that no one has seen fit to offer an opinion. Despite a slew of good reviews (The French tend to favor a nought to three star system), three maximums, six 'very good', in four weeks in Paris it's only racked up one hundred thousand admissions and last week was down to six thousand in five salles which means that the ruthless French distributors will yank it any minute now. That's no way to treat Bertrand Tavernier but compared to Claude Lelouch he probably feels he's being feted; Lelouch's latest, The Human Condition: Part One, Parisiens, has been yanked already after just four weeks, I got there just in time but that's another story. It's amazing what Tavernier has been able to do with a very basic story of a French couple - Jacques Gamblin and Isabelle Carre - attempting to adopt a baby girl in Cambodia. Okay, location shooting helps but frankly Cambodia's not THAT interesting or photogenic whichever way you slice it and it's very much the central performances that sell this one. There's solid support from a few other couples in the same boat but Gamblin are Carre are light years ahead of the pack. Both, of course, have been around a while and both have copped awards, Carre, a Best Actress Cesar for Se Souvenirs des belles choses (another outstanding film that was let down by the public) and Gamblin in Tavernier's own recent masterpiece Laissez-Passer, but somehow they've never received the recognition they deserve and it may be that they'll be denied this time around too. For a cynical Westerner like me it's all too easy to believe in the political/governmental corruption that obtains in countries like Cambodia and Tavernier does little to disabuse me, telling it, presumably, like it is. And that's all it is, really, hope seguing to frustration, more hope, more bribes until at last ... but go and see it, it's worth it, believe me.