Le Bison (et sa voisine Dorine)

This film is no work of art ; nevertheless I would recommend it if only for the performance of Isabelle Nanty. She is excellent in the role of a Paris concierge, four children to look after and a fifth in gestation with a loutish and uncaring husband who runs off with the girlfried of one of the lodgers in her building. This same lodger called Le Bison has rather strange hours and both he and Dorine ( the concierge ) get on each other's nerves because each makes noise at the "wrong" time for the other ! The fact that their respective mates have run off together nevertheless bring the two together and with Dorine's children getting very attached to Le Bison, there are the makings of an "idylle" between the two of them which the return of the two offending mates fails to break ( luckily for the spectator ). The film was made in the rather snobbish and stuck-up 16th arrondissement of Paris with a short foray out to the Northern Coast of France ( Criel sur Mer and Le Tréport ). The children play an important rôle in the film and Isabelle Nanty underlines this in her commentary about the film on the DVD. In fact the "making of" the film is just as much fun to watch as the film itself. So the film is a totally unpretentious slice of modern day life in Paris. I can conceive it not necessarily appealing to non-French speakers but as I live in Paris myself, it is easy for me to identify with the characters and situations. That said, I think Isabelle Nanty is one of today's splendid French actresses and I sincerely hope in the future that she will be better known internationally .