Le Goût des autres (2000) - film review

Castella is a successful businessman, but he is coarse and uneducated and he finds himself increasingly alone and unfulfilled.  When he is coerced into watching a theatre production, he suddenly discovers meaning in his life.  He falls in love with the lead actress, Clara, and engages her to give him lessons in English.  In a clumsy attempt to please Clara, Castella tries to ingratiate himself with her friends, by sponsoring a hopeless artist.  In spite of this, Clara is unable to reciprocate Castella’s feelings...

The most highly rated French film of the year 2000 was this intelligent romantic comedy which marked the directoral debut for multi-faceted Agnès Jaoui.  The film was a hit at the 2001 Césars, winning the best film and best screenplay awards, as well as best supporting actor/actress awards for Gérard Lanvin and Anne Alvaro.  The film also won an Oscar nomination in 2001, for Best Foreign Film.

The film is essentially concerned with how human beings set up artificial barriers according to the social groups they belong to and then attempt to transcend these barriers.  As Castella demonstrates, it requires an inordinate amount of effort to overcome these barriers when some impulse – in this case, love – drives one individual  to join another social grouping.

All of the main characters in this film is to some extent trapped in his or her own little universe.  Castella feels insecure about showing his lack of education and so rejects support from his colleagues and he has no real friends; his wife, an interior designer, seems to inhabit some kind of self-generated fairy tale world; Clara has been a second league repertory actress for so long that she feels it is too late to change; even Castella’s bodyguard and chauffeur are unable to form any mutual attachment, in spite of the fact that they spend most of their time together.  In a subtle way, the film shows how these artificial barriers can be breached and human relationships can be formed in the most unexpected ways.  In a nutshell, Le Goût des autres is a satire on modern life, particularly on how humans beings interact.

Despite all the praise it has received, Le Goût des autres is essentially a conventional French comedy of manners.  What makes it particularly watchable are the quality of the script, which is genuinely witty and perceptive, and the acting, which is exceptional for this genre of film.  The combination of a good script and a good cast lends the film depth and a touch of comic genius.  Although all of the main characters are blatant stereotypes, they are marvellously drawn, and you believe that each one of them is a living breathing individual – in fact the same also applies to some of the minor characters.

The film was written by Agnès Jaoui and her co-author Jean-Pierre Bacri, who have worked together on a number of previous successes, most famously with Alain Resnais’ On connaît la chanson .

© James Travers 2003

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