La Crise

With Les Visiteurs & Le Dîner de Cons, this movie is the funniest French film of the 1990's. It's from Coline Serreau, from the Trois Hommes et un Couffin fame. It's a movie about urban loneliness and indifference, also about the broken families. How can you make fun with such subjects? Miss Serreau did, thanks to a very strong story and a great acting from Patrick Timsit, who becomes a major star after this film. Let's see this to have some real intelligent fun, before Hollywood grabs it for another massacre of French movies.

A very fine script, with a series of crises that just won't stop. Crises staged around various themes: couples breaking up, redundancies, medicine, politics, immigration and more. One crisis after another, bordering on hysteria. Coline Serreau's dialogue is also memorable. We're not necessarily dealing with anything very subtle, with some scenes very much in evidence, but the constant sequence of events doesn't leave the viewer any time to ponder such questions. The main film conductor is Vincent Lindon, who is involved in most of the crises. And he finds himself accompanied by Patrick Timsit, a homeless man who ends up following him everywhere. Obviously, Vincent Lindon's character will evolve and become aware of his relationship with others: wife, friend, work colleague. The film calms down in its final section, though it remains virulent, notably with the encounter with politics.

In terms of form, there's little music, apart from the use of chamber music. It has to be said that the brilliance of the dialogues leaves little room for music.

Man in his thirties loses wife and job and spends chitty-chitty-bang-bang week-end trying to get his life together. Great actor-numbers. Everyone goes through a crisis. A lot of fun for uninvolved viewers. Thought-provoking.

I would easily rate it into the top 100 of bad movies that were originally supposed to be critical, intellectual and observant to societal changes.

It seems they noticed themselves that this was plain c**p, and tried to spice it up with some comedy. Alas, almost always failing in this respect as well.

Yes, I did watch it attentively throughout to the end, thinking and hoping for an explanation of the whole flic. I was hoping and praying that we might find out that it was just a dream, or something likewise. Ales, it wasn't. I don't want to spoiler you with the end, and I couldn't. There's nothing to spoiler you with. The end is actually the climax to an already very weak undertaking.

"Nothing to be seen here. Move further."

Happened upon this movie by accident - on TV. This is a very funny movie, seems extremely well written, directed, and acted, and above all has a heart-warming life-asserting attitude that is very refreshing.