I usually like this kind of movie, all set in one place, all based on the dialogue and just a few characters, and I did like this movie, but also feel that there was something wrong, something unfinished, like they spent so many words on some things in the first part of the movie that they don’t have enough for the second part.. but I can’t really make myself clear here.
I’ll try to explain in detail.
There are only a few characters in this movie:
Élisabeth ( Valérie Benguigui) and her husband Pierre (Charles Berling), with their friend Claude (Guillaume de Tonquédec), Élisabeth’s brother Vincent (Patrick Bruel) and his wife Anna (Judith El Zein). A little description: Élisabeth (called Babou) teaches children at a local school, takes care of their daughter and son and takes care of the house; Pierre teaches at the university La Sorbonne and puts a great importance on words; Claude is a musician, plays the trombone with an orchestra and has always been Babou’s best friend. Vincent is the funny guy, the successful real estate agent who thinks he’s so funny and so irresistible, and his wife Anna who is now five months pregnant.
The plot: Babou invited Claude, Vincent and Anna over for dinner. Anna is late, as it often happens, because she had an important business meeting. She just discovered that she’s going to have a baby boy, so while they wait for her they start talking about the name they have chosen for him. Truth is, they chose the name Henri like his father, but Vincent knows that they’ll think it an ordinary, boring name, so he chooses to have a bit of fun and declares that the baby will be called Adolphe. They are all shocked, and point out how similar it sounds to Adolf, Hitler’s name, and Pierre launches in a long speech trying to make him understand how stupid it would be such a thing. This goes on for a while, Pierre won’t let it go, Vincent won’t change his mind, in fact he says that if he changes it he’ll call him Adolf! Even Babou thinks it a bad idea, when she’s informed, since as always they keep on talking while she’s in the kitchen attending to the dinner. Claude understands the joke when he notices that Vincent had just looked at the novel called Adolphe among Pierre’s books, but says nothing. Finally Anna arrives, but the joke has not been cleared, so Pierre attacks her too about how stupid and inconsiderate such a choice is; Anna doesn’t know that he’s talking about Adolphe, she thinks he’s criticizing their choice of the name Henri, so she gets angry at his tone (and rightly so, I’ll add) and tells him that she won’t take any lecture on names from someone who called his children Apollin and Myrtille! Again, very rightly so, but now finally Vincent understands that things have gone too far, and explains to everyone that it was only a joke... but the words are out already, and Pierre never let’s anything go. From now on , they keep asking, answering and generally telling each other unpleasant things, Pierre more than anyone else, if we want to be honest; it comes out that Pierre thinks Vincent an egocentric, selfish narcissistic man; Vincent says that Pierre cares too much about what people think of him, that he’s a snob who gave his children absurd names just to be noticed, and that he’s a tightwad. They said that Babou put on a lot of weight when she was pregnant, and never regained her
figure. Since Claude never takes a side, they attack him too revealing that Vincent used to call him “la prune”, ‘the plum’ because they all thought he was homosexual. He doesn’t understand at first but when they explain he gets angry that they talked that way behind his back because he’s not. He’s actually in a relationship with a woman, has been for some time, but never told them because the woman is Françoise, Babou and Vincent’s mother, 26 years older than him. They are all surprised that Anna knew and didn’t say anything, but Vincent is out of his mind, and when Claude tries to explain he pushes him down; Claude falls breaking the small table and possibly breaking his nose (that is not clear, but his face is all bloody). Babou is more angry because he never told her, and she thought they were best friends telling each other everything - which is not entirely true because she knew about Vincent’s nickname for Claude but never told him. Pierre is upset that she even told Claude about his sexual problems.
Anna is very upset at Vincent’s behaviour, and demands that he apologizes to Claude. At the end, Babou starts screaming asking who’s ever to apologize to her! She takes it all out, that Pierre is probably ashamed of her because she doesn’t have an important degree like he has, that she sacrificed her career for him, that he wanted children but never does anything for them or with them, that she has to do everything, for the children and in the house - literally everything, I noticed this before, she has a job too but at home he never does a single thing. She gets up and goes to the children when they call, she answers the door every time, she cleans and cooks, she waits on him at dinner and he never even pretends to want to help her; since she complains that they always talk when she’s not present, Pierre even complains that she should stay with them, as if the dinner could serve itself.
Babou also complains that Vincent was always their parents’ favourite because he was the funny one, that he never had to do anything at home because they would have her do it.
Anna takes Claude home, Babou goes to bed, and Pierre tells Vincent that he can sleep on the couch, revealing that he has done so himself many times, and that therefore his marriage is not the perfect one they all thought it was.
The movie doesn’t stop here, though, only the dinner. They are a family after all, so they show us that when Vincent and Anna’s baby is born, and turns out to be a girl, the whole family joins them at the hospital: Babou with Pierre and Françoise with Claude, and the baby will be called Françoise.
ITA cena tra amici
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento