Life of Riley: 'death is on everyone's mind'

France's Alain Resnais ("Hiroshima mon amour," "Last Year at Marienbad") died last year at age 91, with 50 titles to his name and a career that spanned more than six decades. His final film, "Life of Riley," was completed shortly before he passed away.

The film is a play within a play, showing a group of married couples rehearsing together for a community theater production while mulling over the imminent demise of their good friend George Riley. Death is on everyone's mind here — including the aging director's.

"Life of Riley" is based on a 2010 play of the same name by Alan Ayckbourn and, aside from the fact that everyone speaks French, the English-suburbia mood of the original has been duplicated carefully.

The titular Riley is never seen throughout the story, though the women (Sabine Azema, Caroline Sihol, Sandrine Kiberlain) compete for his attention and talk about him incessantly. This is a well-observed matrimonial comedy, peppered throughout with scenes that serve to tell us what happens when two people are trapped too long in the confines of a conventional marriage. Boredom and repetition seems like the least of it.