[Renoir] has succeeded in providing us with some of the warmest, most tender moments in the cinema…. [However], what aspects of life must Renoir exclude from his films to enable him to maintain this open and generous acceptance of all his characters? How does he deal with violence, for instance? and how does he handle the potentially destructive aspects of physical love? To understand all is to forgive all. To what extent, then, is it Renoir's understanding that brings about his constant readiness to forgive? (pp. 56-7)

Renoir manages to send us away from the cinema after what is thematically a grim story of destructive passion and of mistaken justice [La Chienne] with the feeling that, essentially, there has been no harm done. If only one can stand back in the margins of life (the ending seems to say) then all texts can be seen as equally curious...