Based on an original scenario by Feyder and Charles Spaak, it is a psychological drama set largely in a small hotel on the Côte d'Azur, and it provided Françoise Rosay with one of the most substantial acting roles of her career.

Louise Noblet keeps a small hotel, the Pension Mimosas, on the Côte d'Azur in the south of France, with her husband Gaston who is also a supervisor in local casino.

Whereas Le Grand Jeu (1934) was a fast-moving melodrama with some exotic settings, and the later La Kermesse héroïque would be a satirical period farce, Pension Mimosas presented a more measured contemporary drama.

[1] This enclosed setting (though spacious and brightly lit) gives much of the film the feeling of a stage play, a factor which has sometimes been held against it,[1] but it also concentrates attention upon the interplay of character and the actors' performances.

[4] This view has been echoed by a more recent critic: "Without the more ostentatious virtues of Le Grand Jeu and La Kermesse héroïque, Pension Mimosas is a film in intaglio in which Feyder finds a style of classical refinement, free from any pathos...

"[5] When the film was shown in the United States in 1936, it was significantly cut, and the result did not find favour with the reviewer of the New York Times: "...it fails to justify the accolades given it by the foreign press.

"Although everything may not be perfect in this film, one can say that the cinema has rarely shown us a human and living character as complex as that portrayed by Françoise Rosay, with such marvellous intelligence and art.

"[7] Among the many performances that Rosay gave in films directed by her husband, none was more searching or powerful than this one, and Feyder himself, in a dedication that he wrote on a copy of the screenplay, paid tribute to the "overwhelming emotion" that she brought to the role.