Jean Renoir must had really disliked the bourgeois people for making a satire like this. All of the characters are quite stereotypical but this was of course done on purpose and then things get thickened even more as well.
Jean Renoir always had been a sort of special director, that would often experiment within his movies with different techniques and various ways of storytelling. It's the foremost reason why his movies are often really special ones to watch, even when the stories themselves aren't too compelling.
Till some extend this is also true for "La règle du jeu". It's about people wanting things but their lifestyle doesn't permit them to. Forbidden love is of course one of those themes that comes by in this movie, as well as some of the other obvious themes.
It's perhaps not necessarily the story that is anything too great but still its storytelling makes the movie quite a watch. The movie is an unique one in many ways really and I like the fact how this movie does not focus on any main characters really but instead allows every character to have the same amount of screen time. It doesn't matter if the characters is an aristocrat or a servant, the movie treats them all equally.
The storytelling is also helped to make great not in the least thanks to Renoir's directing but also really due to the camera-work. There are quite some long shots in the movie at certain points, in which the camera also moves around through the château, that basically the whole movie takes place in. It's the sort of movie in which the events all take place in one day and mostly at the same locations.
Above all things the movie remains a comedy, or better said a satire. In the beginning the movie is still mostly subtle but in its last 30 minutes or so the gloves are off and the movie becomes quite a crazy one and perhaps even almost slapstick like. I must admit that this was the part that I loved most about this movie.
A superior made movie, by Jean Renoir, at the dawn of WW II (the same time period this actual movie got set in).
8/10
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