[2] Ostensibly set in the near future, the film tells the life story of an elderly man named Thomas Van Hasebroeck (who has dubbed himself Toto, after a childhood fantasy), looking back on his ordinary, apparently uneventful life in a complex mosaic of flashbacks, interspersed with fantasies about how events might have turned out differently.

Vincent Canby gave the film an enthusiastic review in The New York Times, calling it "an enormously witty, bittersweet comedy" that "is both shocking and elegiacal."

He wrote that "the film has the density of a fine short story, written by a master who somehow manages to create a novel-sized world through an uncanny command of ellipsis" and praised "Van Dormael's extraordinary gift for the simultaneous expression of utterly contradictory emotions.

"[3] Variety described the film as "a winning blend of kid's fantasy and adult comedy that's as fresh as a hot croissant.

"[4] Time Out called it "an immensely vibrant, inventive, compassionate movie", and added that though Van Dormael has "an engagingly witty eye for the absurd", he has rooted his film "in emotional reality, so that Thomas' life, loves, desires and anxieties take on great poignancy.