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.

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.

Man in his thirties loses wife and job and spends chitty-chitty-bang-bang week-end trying to get his life together. Great actor-numbers. Everyone goes through a crisis. A lot of fun for uninvolved viewers. Thought-provoking.

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.