Le prénom

"What's in a Name" is a story with an amazingly simple plot...yet it works exceptionally well. The writing, acting and directing are spot on...and make this a French film well worth seeking.

The film is set almost entirely in an apartment and you can easily see that this was once a play. In this apartment, a group of friends and family get together and the evening goes normally enough...to a point. However, when one of the friends makes a stupid joke, the climate in the room becomes quite chilly. Then, soon after, folks start saying things they've never said before...and the room practically becomes the next ice age! While some will undoubtedly see this as a comedy, instead I see it as a very well constructed drama...one that really sucked me into the story. Well made and unique.

"Le Prenom" is about a group of five middle-aged friends who are having a Moroccan dinner get-together one night. The hosts are Pierre (a literature professor) and his dutiful wife Elisabeth (nicknamed Babou). Claude is a professional trombonist who was Elisabeth's best friend. Vincent is Elisabeth's joker of a brother, whose wife Anna is pregnant with their first child.

It was the matter of naming Vincent and Anna's unborn baby boy that starts us off in this adventure of bitter wit and sharp barbs all within the confines of Pierre's apartment. From a heated argument about the name Vincent plans to give his son, their conversation devolves into more serious and painful matters about each other's secrets they have been keeping from each other all these thirty odd years they have known each other as close friends.

"Le Prenom," with its confined action and lengthy dialogues, felt like a play. The passionate cast, led by Vincent Bruel and Charles Berling, were also acting like stage actors with their over-the top, exaggerated (therefore not too realistic for film) reactions and exclamations. I found out afterwards that it was adapted by Mathieu Delaporte and Alexandre de la Patelliere, based on their 2011 stage play.

This script of this film is reminiscent of a 2008 French play by Yasmina Reza called "Gods of Carnage", made into a film called "Carnage" by Roman Polanski. That play/film had two middle-aged couple whose arguments begin from a fight between their sons to topics totally different from what they started talking about.

As with other foreign language films, I felt a lot of the humor and wit is lost in translation into the English subtitles. Especially in a very wordy screenplay like this one with practical jokes and secret revelations, so much subtleties in the use of language is expected, and I surely missed. This is already very good as I watching it, but I have a feeling French-speaking people found it even better. I will definitely watch a live English language performance of this play if there was one.

I highly enjoyed Le Prénom. The dialogs are so dinamic, with such a fluidity and the perfomances are sublime.

'Le prenom' translated in English in the Shakespearean 'What's in a Name' is even more than an adaptation, it is almost filmed theater. Excepting the introduction which is funny but has little to do with the film and the final few minutes which could have been much better all the play ... sorry ... the film takes place in a Parisian apartment where five characters mid-class, mid-age meet for dinner and live the crisis of their lives triggered by a practical joke one of them makes related to the name of his baby-to-come. As in Polanski's 'Carnage' which brought to screen a play by Yasmina Reza, the border between theater and film is never really crossed. Actually this film/play is so close to Reza's style that I would have been fooled easily if they told me it's written by her.

Alexandre de la Patelliere and Mathieu Delaporte brought to screen Delaporte's play and it looks like they do not have any other ambition than bringing to broader audiences the same story of good friends discovering unknown truths and hidden aspects of each other's personalities. Every ten minutes or so we do have a new revelation, each one about another of the characters involved which will put at try family relations and friendships forged decades back, in childhood. There are no social comments of actuality and no political sub-tones if we exclude some references to the left vs. conservative stereotypes, and probably the most significant (and funniest) reference is made to political correctness, related to the selection of the name of the baby boy, but it is consumed unfortunately in the first third of the movie. However, this may play eventually in the favor of the text, keeping it timeless and helping it stay actual even if read and played many years or decades from now.

At the end of the day viewing 'Le prenom' is an enjoyable experience and this is due to the well written dialog (it's a filmed play, but a good one) and to the excellent acting. I especially liked the pair of brother and sister (Patrick Bruel and Valerie Benguigi) who succeed both to bring real-life nuances to their characters, supplementary to the complexity and wit which is derived from the text. Do not avoid 'Le prenom' if it comes soon on a screen or a stage close to your place.

As you sit in front of Le Prénom, you can't help but think how many similarities it shares with Carnage (Polanski, 2011): same middle class context, almost the same setting, but with that French flavour that makes everything much tastier. Vincent is about to become father for the first time, and, during a dinner at his sister's house, he's asked about the name his wife Anna and he want to give their son. This simple, lame question sets off an evening where secrets are revealed, feelings are declared and hypocrisy is unmasked.

I think the movie, built on a very strong and witty screenplay, wouldn't have worked the same if the actors hadn't been so good, with so much remarkable chemistry between them. The cast is directed as if it were a company in a theatre: everyone has to be empathic with the others, in order to make the script work.

Better to watch it in original language, with subtitles: it's worth the risk to miss some of the dialogue.