Le Déménagement (1997)

Le Déménagement is a French film comedy first released in 1997, directed by Olivier Doran.  The film stars Dany Boon, Emmanuelle Devos, Sami Bouajila, Marine Delterme and Dieudonné.  Our overall rating for this film is: mediocre.


Alain, a young writer living in Paris with his wife and daughter, decides to quit his publishing job and move house on the same day.  Things start to go wrong when the removal men he hired turn up four hours early and turn out to be illegal Romanian immigrants.  And their lorry is no more than a small van.  When the police arrive to give notice that the van is illegally parked, the removal men disappear, and Alain has to rely on his friends to ferry his possessions to his new home.  Unfortunately, his friends are not wholly reliable and have problems of their own.  Alain is in for one Hell of a day...

Although somewhat inconsequential from the point of view and plot and characterisation, Le Déménagement is generally an entertaining film and a fairly good example of the popular French comedy.   Admittedly, the humour is excessively juvenile in places and many of the jokes would be lost on a non-French speaking audience (the film seems to be targeted specifically at middle-class Parisians in the 18-30 age bracket).  Fortunately, the film has a great deal of comedy which ought to appeal to a wider audience, and it is overall an engaging comic romp, brought to life by an exuberant cast of popular young French actors.  What the film does manage to convey very well is the the intense pressure of living in the French capital; if it doesn’t put you off living in Paris, nothing will.

© James Travers 2001

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