21 nuits avec Pattie

Saw this at the Rotterdam film festival (iffr.com) 2016. I did not expect, reading the synopsis on the festival website, a gallery of eccentrics. We got it nevertheless but I'm not complaining. Leave your logic at home, since a real corpse in the real world cannot survive three nights without producing an unhealthy smell, unlike this particular corpse that seemed to get away with natural phenomena as we know it. The whodunit and the role of the police are just a small part of the story, merely a vehicle to assemble all these non-average figures into one single story, flowing with unexpected turns of events from begin to end, without losing its drive and without dull moments.

This movie firstly seems to be a comedy confronting two women with radically different attitude about sex: Patty describes her very active sex life with a lot of embarrassing details to the shy and conservative bourgeois Caroline who just wants to conduct the funeral for her mother. Beyond these very funny scenes, it turns out to be a beautiful, heart-warming and poetic reflection about sex, happiness, grief and death. We follow Caroline in her journey from a sad, conventional, "respectable" life to the discovery of simple happiness, helped by the memories of her late libertine mother and a series of funny and nice people. The two main actresses are wonderful. (Note that contrary to what this review may imply, there are no sex scenes in this movie, although some language may sound very explicit).

Both my wife and I gave this film three stars out of five when we saw it last night at filmfestdc. We might have enjoyed it more had it been described more accurately: though it has a few humorous moments, mostly near the beginning, it is _not_ a comedy. For us, the best things about it were the beautiful lead actress, whose face was evocative and touching, and the depiction of rural French life.

One correction of a previous IMDb review: there _is_ a very brief sex scene (just a few seconds, though preceded by a somewhat longer scene of oral and physical foreplay). I would also disagree that the movie is "about necrophilia," though certainly that plays a major role in the plot. And though the main character is definitely buttoned-up--the arc of the movie is about her becoming unbuttoned, so to speak--I don't think she should be called prudish; a prude would not have tolerated Pattie's stories of her sexual escapades. Sorry for the quibbles, but after last night, I want to see the film described as accurately as possible!