Merci la vie

Bernard Blier's movie has many moments or remarkable cinema. Unfortunately, it is too complex to enjoy. The screen writer and the director play with the story line, jump time periods and change characters in a sophisticated manner. You keep on changing your mind about 'what the film is about'. It is never boring, just too complex to follow and really enjoy beyond the expert film making. Some of the great names of the French cinema star in this movie, as well as two of the hot female stars of the newer generation. Worth watching, but not for the commercial cinema fans. 7 out of 10 on my personal scale.

after seeing this movie for the 1st time on 'cuny' in nyc, & being a lover/francophile of french movies, i have to comment that this may have been the worst movie, us, french, etc, that i have ever seen. gainsborough's performance was gratuitous & only n movie due to father, the story line was ridiculous, & depardieu, but then again not only has he sold out, but has been embarrassed by the us movies he has appeared in, should be ashamed. besides that, joelle was beautiful!! this was french "new wave???, at its worst.

... and you get the film that made me understand what cinema was all about.

The simple story of two teenagers meeting at no time. The candid one, Camille, makes the audience, the more experienced one, Joelle, provides the story: in the 80s or 90s, a foolish lover decides to exploit her sickness (AIDS) to contaminate the male population of his provincial town and gain on the visits of his new patients... the clever man is a GP.

The story is made even more interesting when it suddenly jumps from one period of the 20th century to the other, France under occupation during the second world war. Whatever the period, the drama is the same.

What I liked so much in this film is the way Blier makes the last jump, when the film is no longer about the story but about the crew of the film. It is not only a simple effect, it goes on showing that life is a drama whatever the situation, that even if Joelle is an actress, still she can live the same drama.

The other great thing about this film is that you can't help comparing it with Blier's 'Les Valseuses', and read it as the story of friendship and liberty at two different times (70's for les valseuses). This is not just because of the story line, but is present at almost every shots. From the meeting of the two encounters to simple shots on the road, where both walk, one slower than the other, like an unbalanced pair.

A confused and rambling mess. It has a few funny moments, and the whole are they in a film, are they shooting a film, is it a flashback structure could have been very intresting, but it's too confused and confusing, and with too many unnecessary and unpleasant scenes of young women being punched and kicked on the floor for no good reason, for it to be worth the investment to try to follow it properly.

This movie starts out with a VERY common French movie plot about two young women--a homeless drifter (Anouk Grinsberg) and a teenager (Charlotte Gainsbourg) whose parents are away--befriending each other and deciding to "explore their sexuality" together. Director Bertrand Blier then, however, decides to spin the story in all kinds of, uh, interesting, directions. The two mischievous minxes torment a slow-witted handyman with cherry bombs and by nearly blowing up his car before they both have sex with him (shades of "Don't Deliver Us from Evil"). Even in these more "realistic" scenes though the footage switches from really bleached out to brightly colored, and the actresses costumes suddenly change accordingly (much like Peter Greenaway's "The Cook, the Thief, his wife, and Her Lover").

There is then a long horror-ish sub-plot where it turns out the older of the girls has been intentionally infected with a dangerous and contagious venereal disease by a mad doctor (Gerard Depardieu)--kind of like a black comedy version of David Cronenberg's "Shivers"--and the whole town is howling for her blood. Then suddenly the movie goes into a bizarre version of "Back to the Future" where the two girls are apparently back in time and trying to convince the younger girl's parents to conceive her. The older girl promises sex to the milquetoast father in order to get him interested in his wife while the younger girl reasonably points out that if she isn't born, he will never get to have sex with her friends later! In the middle of all this, there is an annoying Fellini-esque device with a film crew hanging around, which suggests the whole thing is just a movie--although even for a movie, it's bizarre beyond belief. And the end probably goes too far with Holocaust imagery of a lot of naked people packed on a freight train. . .

I would actually consider this movie a litmus test of how much you like French art cinema in general. If you find this pretentious and indulgent, you probably don't, but if you find it entertaining in its off-the-wall irreverence and failure conform to the standard Hollywood movie structure, you would almost certainly be a fan of French cinema in general. I think pretty EVERYBODY is a fan of sexy French actresses though regardless. Anouk Grinsberg has all the nude/sex scenes, but then 19-year-old Charlotte Gainsbourg spends most of the movie in a pair of very short cut-offs that accentuate her long legs and perfect body. I would reckon it would take this younger Gainsbourg about five minutes to seduce any of the idiot males who call her "ugly" nowadays simply because she has had the temerity to appear in fairly explicit Lars Von Trier movies even though she is in her early forties now.

Although this definitely tried my patience at times, I can't say I didn't like it. I would recommend it to fans of French cinema in general, but if you really don't like French cinema, you should probably avoid it.