what is the point?

Well, FWIW, I adore it and always have. Your own dislike of it may simply mean that it didn't connect to you. It may help to have a foundation of some sort in Rudolph's other films. While I wouldn't pretend that this is his best film (ultimately it's a light little trifle), it is endearing to me and fun from beginning to end. There are things about it that I'm sure turn people off (Berenger's affected performance, the whole "plot going nowhere" business, the tone of the comedy and the intentionally artifical quality of the picture in general) but none of these things damage the film for me and, in fact, are amongst the things I cherish about it. Rudolph's films, particularly from this period, traffic in and embrace artifice--it's his way of acknowledging the inherent absurdity of our romantic entanglements and life itself, I suppose. There's no way to convince someone to like what he is doing here--it is pushed far from conventional realism and has fewer direct tethers to what we like to think is recognizable behavior than most anything else he has done. It may simply be a question of whether you share his sense of humor and connect to his brand of wistful, melancholic romanticism. You may want to look at a more recent film of his, "The Secret Lives of Dentists". I was less crazy about that one personally as it seemed to soften the edges of what he does so well but there's little question (look at the reviews) that this probably made it more accessible. As to the argument that the film goes nowhere, I have to disagree. It is always funny to me to see Berenger's oh so mistakenly self-assured detective follow the completely wrong lead at the film's start and take us down a false path. It has humor because he doesn't grasp his mistake for so long and it has depth because the standard detective plot the film could have followed would have been exactly that; there would have been nothing spontaneous or quirky about it and these are the essential human elements Rudolph loves so much and embraces here as elsewhere in his work. Harry points out at the end in a wonderful bit of self consciously arch dialogue that he was following the wrong man because the beautiful woman who had hired him was as well. Not a subtle correlation I'll grant you but one that always feels poignant and perfect to me. Maybe that's why I love it so much. Rudolph values the embarrassment of sincere feelings expressed while others would do anything to avoid them or be seen as beyond their grasp.

The point? It seems Rudolph, above all, went for some kind of a mood piece here as well as a farcical pastiche of noir and the private eye mythos. It's not exactly satisfying on the plot level as little interesting happens and it all kind of goes nowhere ultimately, but I liked the film's laid-back vibes and found Berenger's growling, bumbling detective rather amusing.



"facts are stupid things" Ronald Reagan

Nope. The movie has less substance than a soap bubble. There is absolutely nothing to see here. Not a thing. It's borderline a stream of consciousness movie at times.