L’Âge d’homme... maintenant ou jamais! (2007) - film review

Samuel is a 30-year-old filmmaker who, until a year ago, was a diehard bachelor.  It was a life that suited him, with no commitments, no heartache and no broken china.  But then he met Tina, a gorgeous photographer, and now he has been in a relationship with her for a full twelve months.  Samuel realises he must make a decision, either to get engaged or put an end to the relationship.  He gives himself one day to make up his mind...

How typically French - an existential rom-com, in which the lead character converses with Leonardo da Vinci, imagines he is a caveman raiding a cashpoint machine and agonises over whether or not to shave his scrotum.  An unedifying concoction of surreal flights of fancy and the usual plethora of mid-life clichés, this second feature from director Raphael Fejtö comes as a disappointment after his enjoyable debut film Osmosis (2003).

If the lacklustre plot with its frequent excursions into the vulgar and frankly weird don’t put you off, then Romain Duris’s embarrassing displays of narcissistic excess almost certainly will.  The film takes a reasonable premise - a man’s mid-life dilemma over whether to settle down or move on (to flee, or not to flee) - and blows it on a series of badly conceived sketches which add up to very little.  Yet another charismatic performance from Duris isn’t enough to hold together what looks suspiciously like something Cédric Klapisch may have knocked up with the Monty Python team after both had run out of ideas.

© filmsdefrance.com 2010

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