Pierre (Michel Piccoli) seems to have everything- he's a successful architect with a great apartment, a house in an island full of memories, a well-behaved, loving son, a beautiful ex-wife (Lea Massari) who doesn't hate him, a luminous mistress (Romy Schneider) who adores him. He's been vacillating lately about leaving Helene (Schneider) and go back to Catherine (Massari) because he has so many beautiful memories with his family even though he loves Helene very much. He fears that they will grow apart and fall out of love, just like any other relationship. Les Choses de la vie examines his life as he experiences fatal car crash which repeats many times in slow motion throughout the film.
It's a fluffy adult melodrama about however little choices we make in real life largely figure into the outcome, whatever it maybe, that life is always full of regrets. Acting from Piccoli, Schneider and Massari are superb. The best part, aside from Schneider typing naked with only with horn-rimmed glasses on, is the love triangle depicted carefully with great subtlety: as Pierre laying on the ground dying after the crash, thinking about the break-up letter he wrote to Helene and desperately wishing it wouldn't reach her. Catherine is handed the letter after Pierre is pronounced dead at the hospital, she reads it and sees Helene rushing into the hospital through the window and tears the letter to shreds. Delicious stuff.
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