La crise

With Les Visiteurs & Le Dîner de Cons, this movie is the funniest French film of the 1990's. It's from Coline Serreau, from the Trois Hommes et un Couffin fame. It's a movie about urban loneliness and indifference, also about the broken families. How can you make fun with such subjects? Miss Serreau did, thanks to a very strong story and a great acting from Patrick Timsit, who becomes a major star after this film. Let's see this to have some real intelligent fun, before Hollywood grabs it for another massacre of French movies.

This movie gives a good view, although somewhat distorted, of France in the 90s.

A man in his mid-life crisis loses his wife, his kids and his job the same day. He then goes through a picaresque journey with a nitwit side kick he finds on his way and whom he decides to help.

The man, played by a very good Vincent Lindon, meets friends, friends of friends, and relatives, and realizes what the true reasons of his failures are.

Everybody is going through his own crisis and the main character realizes that everybody's life sucks (or does it really?)

This film treats about every social problems in our modern societies: solitude, lack of love, lack of work, lack of understanding, lack of appreciation.

Some of the characters are a little bit cliches, but most of them give a very very good interpretation. I also think that the cliches are very acceptable because the whole atmosphere of the movie is very surrealistic.

Look out for the scene with the parents. It's my personal favorite.

A very fine script, with a series of crises that just won't stop. Crises staged around various themes: couples breaking up, redundancies, medicine, politics, immigration and more. One crisis after another, bordering on hysteria. Coline Serreau's dialogue is also memorable. We're not necessarily dealing with anything very subtle, with some scenes very much in evidence, but the constant sequence of events doesn't leave the viewer any time to ponder such questions. The main film conductor is Vincent Lindon, who is involved in most of the crises. And he finds himself accompanied by Patrick Timsit, a homeless man who ends up following him everywhere. Obviously, Vincent Lindon's character will evolve and become aware of his relationship with others: wife, friend, work colleague. The film calms down in its final section, though it remains virulent, notably with the encounter with politics.

In terms of form, there's little music, apart from the use of chamber music. It has to be said that the brilliance of the dialogues leaves little room for music.

Happened upon this movie by accident - on TV. This is a very funny movie, seems extremely well written, directed, and acted, and above all has a heart-warming life-asserting attitude that is very refreshing.

Another Coline Serreau film with Vincent London. Similar to previous two I have seen, this one also has a surrealistic bent.

It tries to show a mirror to our society And the reflection that we see is not pretty.

While I liked this film, I was not blown over by it as I was Chaos and "La Belle Verte". Both of them by same director and both a little surrealistic in nature. Maybe I was not in mood for the film and I may have to watch it again.

Still it is a good film. And Vincent London has done a fine job as always.