Leur morale... et la nôtre (2008)

Leur morale... et la nôtre is a French film comedy first released in 2008, directed by Florence Quentin.  The film stars André Dussollier, Victoria Abril, Samir Guesmi, Micha Lescot and Françoise Bertin.  Our overall rating for this film is: mediocre.


André and Muriel are a happily married French couple who make a comfortable living by claiming refunds on products they buy from their supermarket and later selling the same products in their shop at a discount.  The scam works fine until their next-door neighbour succumbs to what looks like a fatal bout of food poisoning after eating a frozen paella which they sold her.  Fearing they might be sued, the couple do what they can to conceal the fact they were responsible for poisoning the old woman, whom they have good reason to believe will leave them her house when she dies, as she has no other relatives.  Imagine then André and Muriel’s surprise, if not horror, when they learn that their neighbour has died and left all her worldly goods to a young Arab man, who claims to be her son.   Xenophobic by nature, the couple immediately suspect foul play and when the stranger moves in next door they resolve to expose him as a criminal.  They have no idea what they are getting into...

Florence Quentin’s third film has a little more substance than her previous lightweight comedy offerings - J’ai faim!!! (2001) and Olé! (2005) - but again suffers from an irksome tendency to try a little too hard to get the laughs and characterisation that stretches caricature far too far for the film to be remotely credible.  Even with spirited performances from stars of the calibre of André Dussollier and Victoria Abril, Leur morale... et la nôtre struggles to hold the spectator’s interest and sitting through its ninety-plus minutes of strained comic situations is something of an endurance test, relieved only occasionally by the odd genuinely funny moment. 

In contrast to Quentin’s previous films, which deserve to be overlooked, this one has a promising starting point, touching on many of the ills that blight society today (people who habitually rip off manufacturers, the insularity of suburban life, the hypocrisy of the middle classes, etc).  Unfortunately, the film fails to weave these concerns into anything approaching an intelligent piece of social commentary, and instead resorts to the lamest kind of stereotyping and tedious comedy routines in a misguided attempt to extract cheap laughs, with all the subtlety of a quack dentist bending over his patient with a pair of pliers in one hand and a dirty great power drill in the other.  For diehard fans of Victoria Abril, the film is probably just about bearable - but only just.  Apart from insomniacs, sadomasochists and other filmmakers who take a sadistic pleasure in learning from other people’s mistakes, everyone else should give it a very wide berth.

© filmsdefrance.com 2011

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