Et soudain tout le monde me manque (2011) - film review

Family life can be very complicated, especially when you are sixty and your new wife is about to give birth to your third child.  This is the predicament that Eli finds himself in.  Just how is he to break the news to his two grown-up daughters, Dom and Justine?  Eli has always found it difficult to get on with Justine, so he conceives a plan to show how much he cares for her - a plan that is doomed to fail...

After her promising debut feature Jusqu’à toi (2009), director Jennifer Devoldère offers up a second helping of downbeat comedy-melodrama. although this one cannot help feeling like reheated leftovers from American sitcoms.  This time, Devoldère tackles the thorny subject of the father-daughter relationship, and leaves no cliché unturned in her efforts to extract a laugh and a tear from the more susceptible members of her audience.  Et soudain tout le monde me manque is unlikely to win any awards for originality, and is so obviously made for the small screen you wonder why Devoldère bothered with a theatrical release, but it does have a certain charm and sliver of authenticity, thanks mainly to the engaging central performances from Michel Blanc and Mélanie Laurent. 

Blanc needs no introduction and is an obvious casting choice for the part of the slightly neurotic father who is suffering from what appears to be a delayed mid-life crisis.  His presence salvages what really is little more than a third rate comedy searching desperately for an original idea and brings a badly needed jolt of realism to deflect our attention from the banal subject matter and barrage of misfired gags.  Mélanie Laurent is far less at ease in her role (that of the grown-up daughter who seems to be in a permanent state of adolescent rebellion) but works surprisingly well with Blanc and helps to create the illusion that the film has more backbone that is in fact the case.  Et soudain tout le monde me manque is one of those anodyne comedies that offers a fairly satisfactory alternative to a dull evening of mindless télé-zapping but, like an uneventful one-night stand, it will have all but faded from your mind by the morning, leaving only a faint sense of embarrassment.  Don’t be deceived by the title; this is not a film you will miss in a hurry.

© filmsdefrance.com 2011

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