Review by dbdumonteil

Michel Berthier has been an executive in a mattress firm for ten years. One day, he's learning that he is fired. He doesn't want to reveal it to his wife Juliette and tries to artificially his life. But within a few weeks, things happen quickly: he is thrown out from his home by his wife and finds himself out on the street. It's there that he meets a bunch of homeless people who support him by their friendship. They live by begging, tricks and petty thefts.

For his fourth passage behind the camera, Gérard Jugnot decided to look into one of the biggest dramas of our time: the increase of the new poor and the homeless. For this, it is virtually certain that Frank Capra's cinema was his main source of inspiration. The studied topic and the treatment that is made of it warn the spectator that we are not on an original land (a dramatic topic treated on a comedy tone). However, Jugnot found the balance in his screenplay to alternate moments of tenderness, emotion and hoots of laughter. It is a shame that vulgarity and easiness often spoil the pleasure we take to watch this film.

Where Jugnot appears interesting is in the way he perceives these new poor who live hand to mouth. His outcasts are more generous than embittered, friendlier than revolted. They are especially linked by values which Western society doesn't seem to know any more: solidarity, trust and fidelity. Without them, it is impossible to manage all alone. The best proof of it can be found at the end of the film. Indeed, Michel's friends help him to reconquer the heart of his wife.

Eventually, the performance of the actors is widely sufficient to justify the view of Jugnot's opus, especially Richard Borhinger's.