Les deux amis

What a sophisticated and innovative tragicomedy. Underrating is nonsense. Through the dark funny absurd situations there is a very careful script that develops gradually each character, and provides the clues to the spectator as both the woman's drama and the buddies' comedy of manners advance. Off course charming, beautiful and strong Mona Dessaint is the character who shines, and the film starts showing her life. However, as everyone may notice, the movie's title is "two friends", and there is a reason for that. Everything is about them, their dusfunctional friendship, what they show to each other, what they hide, what they even do not know, althouth everybody around seem to have noticed. Although everything in the movie happens with Mona as the object of their arguments, she is not the reason, she is just the spark. They say that "it may not happen again", and that means that before her there was another Mona. When the film ends, it was clear that it would not take too much time for a new Mona appears.

In Paris, Mona Dessaint (Golshifteh Farahani) is authorized by the justice to leave the prison where she is incarcerated to work at a coffee shop at the Gare du Nord. When she returns, she needs to respect the scheduled hour and is submitted to breathalyzer. When the loser and insecure Clément (Vincent Macaigne), who has a crush on Mona, finds her job, he disturbs her, and she asks him to go away. Clément calls his best friend, the womanizer Abel (Louis Garrel), to help him to be with Mona, and they abduct her from the train. Without money to take a taxi to the prison, Mona stays with them along the night where the friendship of Clément and Abel is tested.

"Les deux amis", a.k.a. "Two Friends" is a simple romance between two men and a woman, object of interest of them. The male characters are awful, since Clément is a weird man with beard and whiny voice and Abel is totally unexpressive, keeping the same face along the story and betraying his best friend. The greatest attraction is the beautiful Golshifteh Farahani, but why she traded six additional months in prison to spend the night with the two men that kidnapped her. Stockholm Syndrome? Another point is why didn't she have a threesome with Abel and Clément at the hotel room after giving ardent kisses? Was the director afraid to show this type of behavior to Mona? In the end, "Two Friends" is a forgettable romance without anything special. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Dois Amigos" ("Two Friends")

This trio has already done a short movie about the same triangle : the fragile bearded friend, the racked other and the gracious Goldsifeth. Here the story is interesting and is reminiscent to « after hours » as Goldsifeth stays in Paris for a wild night with those friends instead of coming back to prison ! There is some good moments also because the movie is shot live in the streets of Paris : for one time, it's not the « city of lights » but the city of workers with public transports, old apartments, small streets… The cast is good, especially Goldsifeth who has totally assimilated french culture and better than some others native ! However, at the end, the movie is too much talks, not really optimist and repetitive with those hugging / fighting friends! As my version had in addition a horrible sound and no subtitles, it was really hard for me to follow it and i was thus happy when the movie ended !

Louis Garrel joins his father at the other side of the camera for his first long movie in which he offers a fresh vision of friendship through a crazy comedy. The duo Vincent Macaigne/Louis Garrel works perfectly and it makes the public laugh. Regarding Golshifteh Farahani, she surprises with her performance of woman that resists to the two men, but that still manage to break their friendship. They love each other, they fight each other (with a cast and a script that flirts with theatre), we are surprised but we never get bored. Louis Garrel evokes a serious subject with a certain cynicism: the fear to be left alone in the middle of a trio in which friendship is sometimes swallowed by love. Because three can be friends, but love is reserved for only two. Even if the films is not revolutionary, it is quite entertaining and it has some key scenes that make the public laugh and give them some food for thought. Full review on our blog Los Indiscretos : https://losindiscretos.org