Embrassez qui vous voudrez

It was Francois Ozon's 'Swimming Pool' that really made me sit up and take note of Charlotte Rampling's suitability to french cinema. Her stern facade yet the notion she is longing for sexual freedom suits it to a 't'.

After 'Swimming Pool' I made a conscious search for Rampling's other forays into french cinema, and this is one of the surprisingly many i came up with.

'Summer Things' seemed to me a bit like a multiple brief encounter. It follows a family riddled with dissatisfaction and their friends over the course of a summer. The daughter off for a 'naughty summer'in Chicago with the boyfriend her parents don't know about, the mother off with her friends all of whom have terrible family problems themselves, and the father who spends the summer liberated from the wife he is confused by, in the arms of his transsexual lover.

The characters are all linked in such deliciously complex ways - one of the biggest links being how much they need this change, this summer to not make them change their lives as what is expected of films of this nature, but in fact to learn how to enjoy the lives they already have - this idea was so refreshing, and like 'brief encounter' what made it so real. there weren't any epiphanies, just character developments, life lessons and realisations of the fact that the grass is never as green as we hope it might be.

Watch it! :)

subtle, refined, typically french, investigating human relations in a more complex manner, but all with a smile on your face (a smile ?, no, sorry, A BIG LAUGH !).

LAUGHING and LAUGHING and LAUGHING !!!

VERY ORIGINAL (again - typically french)

If you like french movies you MUST see it. If not ... run away.

Let's face it: the people in this film of vacationing Frenchmen are often unpleasant, sometimes downright loathsome. And yet, I had a good time watching, owing to Michel Blanc's skill at keeping all the balls in the air. I don't know how many speaking parts there are, maybe 20, but the energy never flags because of the marvelous actors. Karin Viard is my favorite actress for comedy; here she is wonderful as the frustrated wife of Podalydès trying to scrimp through a holiday that their finances really don't allow. The scene of Podalydès standing on the cliff, with Rampling quietly trying to buck him up, Ulliel crouched below, his tryst with Mélanie Laurent interrupted, and Viard gabbing away unwittingly with her friends until her husband jumps is a comic masterpiece.

Carole Bouquet is another favorite of mine, since she stole Bunuel's last picture Cet obscur objet du désir over 30 years ago. She too is great in comedy--here she is saddled with the most jealous husband in recent film memory (go back to François Cluzet's harassing of Emmanuelle Béart in L'enfer). Blanc keeps yelling at her, accusing her of infidelities, and she grimly makes the best of it, helped by her new-found friends Rampling and Viard. As I said at the outset, sometimes the characters do unpleasant things, but you don't get the feeling that the deck is stacked against them.

this is not typically french as i've read in some other comments. the film is based on a british book ....

it's a very acid and cynic satire of how some people's lives are laced with lies ...

it has this kind of witty bitter humour that will make it a very enjoyable movie, and i'm going to buy the book to see if there are any notable differences..

thank you for your attention !

Zillionth French "tranches de vie" comedy gets a bit upgraded through actresses Carole Bouquet and Charlotte Rampling, the only 2 likable characters in the whole flick. The rest of the cast is so obnoxious, self-centered and arrogant you dislike 'em the second they appear on the screen. Especially the oversexed 17-year old daughter, although very pretty, is as they say in French "une emmerdeuse de prémière classe" ( a first-rate pain in......).

It may fast-paced and funny in an art-house kindaway but it remains supremely annoying.

For some good recent French comedies opt instead of course for 'Amélie', or something with actor Benoit Poelvoorde (Le vélo, Dead weight,Podium)or 'Mission Cleopatre' based on the highly popular french comic books "Asterix".

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