Le vilain

Catherine was only 53 when she made this movie but they made her look at least 15 years older .

It's a funny little comedy,which loses steam in its second half ,but nevertheless defends the owners of an old block against expropriation and the estate developers.

Mom is unbreakable ,just like Bruce Willis in the famous eponymous movie ;so ,in a first scene ,she visits a terminaly-ill (??) patient and asks him ,that when he ......(she doesn't utter the fatal word) , he can speak to the all-mighty of her condition which might prevent her from going to Heaven ; it's full of black humor,a quality which is one of the strong points of this farce .

Her only son comes home ,after many years away .She is in awe of him , but soon discovers that he is not what he claims to be ; he used to falsify his school reports ,he keeps pornographic pictures he uses to blackmail somebody....And hemight be a gangster ,at that!

Mom comes to think that she did not educate her dear one as she should have.Thus ,God's curse. In the house ,there's a tortoise named Penelope :sometimes we see the story through the pet's eyes .Subjective camera ,indeed.

Some gags ,such as the doctor's interventions ,are repetitive ,but Frot is irresistible as a granny without grandchildren.So far.

A delightful black comedy, offering to Catherine frot the opportunity to create a lovely and, in paradoxal manner, realistic portrait of a mother discovering , after decades, his returned to home son being not exactly the one who she knows.

The war between them is just admirable crafted, the cliche, smart used, the proofs of not so wise childhood just touching and the conflict against estate developers just nice.

Absurd situations, neighbors solidarity, an ex teacher of Spanish with sentimental life ruined by the hero of film, a doctor and his extractions of bullets and the source of a form of invincibility.

No doubts, the real - real star is the tortoise Penelope.

In short, just delightful film and great work of Catherine Frot.