[The skeleton of this review was set up earlier on Filmleaf during the Rendez-Vous at Lincoln Center in February 2009 but I neglected to post it here.]
The door code has changed; the premise has notIt's a well-worked comcept, that of a gathering of old friends that turns sour. This time it's complicated enough, with four couples, all more or less in crisis. They're all forty-something "bobos," well heeled bohemians. It's not a "Dinner Game" (Diner de Cons) a la Francis Veber, because everybody is partly deceiving and partly a dupe. Danielle Thompson's skill at this kind of complicated festive gathering from hell, with personal baggage unpacked, was evident in her first film,
La Buche. Her mobile camera entertainingly explores a series of warm portraits. Or at least it did in
La Buche, and did also more simply in her last film,
Avenue Montagne. This time the interactions are a bit too complicated to follow, let alone care about. Thompson and her usual co-writer, her son Christopher (who as usual is also in the cast) must perforce spend a lot of their time on basic exposition of simply who everybody is and what their relationships are.
The dinner takes place at the giant flat of cutthrouat divorce lawyer ML (Karin Viard) and her unemployed spouse Piotr (Dany Boon). Guests include oncologist Alain (Patrick Bruel), his gynecologist wife Melanie (Marina Hinds), successful attorney Lucas (Christopher Thompson) and his pretty wife Sarah (Emmanuelle Seigner). There's an actor who works in TV commercials named Erwann (Patrick Chesnais) with a much younger lover Juliette (Marina Hands), who's ML's sister.
When they get to talking they reveal both their discontent with their current official partners and their rampant infidelities. While we're still chewing on all the exposition and chatter, the film jumps ahead a yea to show how couples have rearranged themselves, with flashbacks to the painful dinner and the unfolding of some tragic events that it may be hard to care about.
It's all very glossy and actors like Hinds and Seignier add warmth (and Chenais his customary dryness), but it's also pretty hard to care about the intricate but generally superficial proceedings. The bouillabaisse has too many ingredients this time.
Further comment appended on Filmleaf:
Note that this was the second-lowest rated film on Allocine' of the whole Rendez-Vous 2009 series. Daniele Thompson can entertain, as she did in her previous three films,
La Buche (1999),
Jet Lag/Décolage horaire (2002), and her 2006
Avenue Montaigne/Fauteuils d'orchestre, which was part of a previous Lincoln Center Rendez-Vous with French Cinema series. Occar [Jubis, a Filmleaf contributor] commented on Thompson's "flawless execution," while also slightly holding his nose ("I'm not inclined to overpraise this type of pleasant middlebrow confection"), and found
Avenue Montaigne reminded him of Klapisch's
Russian Dolls -- another film of the 2006 Rendez-Vous, Well, I might point out that
Russian Dolls contains characters of multiple nationalities who are considerably poorer and youger. I have a definite weakness for Klapisch and lack of ability to respond to Thompson's glossy ensemble pieces. But Klapisch veered somewhat more into Thompson territory in his recent (and not much remembered?)
Paris (part of the 2008 Rendez-Vous), with less success, but still with a younger and arguably more lively cast -- including Romain Duris, Mélanie Laurent, Juliette Binoche, François Cluzet, Fabrice Luchini, Albert Dupontel, Karin Viard, lovely almost-newcomer. There is a difference.