Je règle mon pas sur le pas de mon père

A young man meets his father who he didn't know. Together, they earn their live by conning people. A small movie, which never gets deep into the characters. Jean Yanne is as usual (both his good and bad sides). Laurence Côte plays a very charming character. For the fans of Techiney actress in "Les Voleurs" (Thieves).

A young trainee chef Sauveur (Guillaume Canet) learns the existence of his father he never knew Bertrand (Jean Yanne). The latter lives thanks to two-bit tricks and swindles. At first hostile to this intrusion, he ends up associating his son and learns him the tricks of the trade until one day Sauveur falls in love with Sandra, a young photograph who is their next victim...

Rémi Waterhouse was Patrice Leconte's scenarist to whom he gave help for his celebrated "Ridicule" (1996) and also the female French André Cayatte, Yannick Bellon: "la Triche" (1984), "les Enfants Du Désordre" (1989) and "l'Affût" (1992). Generally, scenarists don't have the reputation to make worthy films. "Je Règle Le Pas Sur Le Pas Sur Le Pas De Mon Père" seems to illustrate this trend once again. We aren't in uncharted waters for this is the umpteenth version of a young man who discovers he has a father who lives through shady business and wants to know him better. Why bother to watch this common piece of work?

Because this little black comedy would be anonymous without its two central performances. Guillaume Canet and Jean Yanne are here to make the viewer stay until the end where there is an unexpected twist in the amount of the story. Jean Yanne's cynical, disillusioned personality reflects the deliberately dull cinematography Waterhouse used for his film. Even if the film is most of the time banal, there are real efforts from the director to give a stylish, personal work: from the backdrop that depicts these little people in little houses living in the North of France who are so naive to often well found dialogs.

There's nothing new under the sun in this variation father-son but watch it for Yanne and Canet.

... of whom I'm definitely one. If those superb oily jowls are covered with a grey beard now, I don't mind. He's the last representative of la France profonde (remember him as the butcher in Chabrol's Le Boucher?), and when he goes, so will go a certain ugly truth in French cinema. We see rural land being swallowed up by big-box warehouse stores, gas stations and highways. Yanne makes his way through this wasteland, just as cruelly irresponsible as you could wish, a rat among rats, as he teaches his unwanted son the rules of grifting.

I really wanted to see Laurence Côte after her astonishing role in Les Voleurs, where she was one of the great love objects in recent film history. I didn't find her part well developed; it's sort of a plot mechanism for Canet to assert himself with his father.

Superb acting by the brilliantly casted Jean Yanne and Guillaume Canet as , respectively, father and son, coupled with quintessential French middle class humor and non pretentious modern locales and situations make this film both (1)a father and son, and (2) a road movie to see. Brilliant directing by first time helmer Remy Waterhouse.