Rien à déclarer (2011) - film review

1st January 1993 is a historic date for Europe, the date on which border controls are lifted for countries within the European Union.  One man who is not happy with this development is Ruben Vandervoorde, a customs officer in a small town on the Franco-Belgian border.  A rabid Francophobe and lifelong Belgian nationalist, Ruben is outraged when he is forced to set up a mobile customs team with his French counterpart and sworn enemy, Mathias Ducatel.   Convinced of the superiority of his country, Ruben is determined to put Mathias in his place.  So much for the entente cordiale...

After the immense success of Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (2008), which attracted a record-breaking audience of 20 million spectators in France, you could forgive Dany Boon for opting out of the show business lottery and heading off to some distant tropical shore to live a life of luxurious indolence on the proceeds of his one great triumph.  But no, the lure of the greasepaint and the clapperboard was evidently too strong to resist and Dany Boon is back, writing, directing and starring in another ebullient, gag-filled populist comedy.  As I write, Rien à declarer has already notched up an audience of 8 million and is likely to be the biggest French hit of the year, if not the decade.  You’d almost think Dany Boon is the reincarnation of Gérard Oury - he certainly has Oury’s flair for making crowd-pulling comedies of the kind the French are particularly susceptible to.

Rien à declarer is Boon’s third film to date and, for better or for worse, it has a great deal in common with Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis.  Both films are unsophisticated buddy comedies which make light of racial intolerance, mainly by resorting to some pretty outrageous racial stereotyping.  Whereas the earlier film dealt with the north-south divide in contemporary France, this one pokes fun at the ancient schism between France and Belgium.  Racism remains a major issue in France, so the film is highly topical, but by resorting to facile stereotypes its message somehow manages to get lost along the way.  Had the film confronted the issue of racism more directly, perhaps through France’s relationship with its former African colonies, it might have been a more worthy effort, although it would no doubt have bombed at the box office.  For some reason, the French just don't find the Algerians as funny as the Belgians.

Technically, Rien à declarer is superior to Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis - Boon appears far more confident in his direction and the film is somewhat better structured.  However, its anti-racist subtext is handled with far less subtlety and much of the humour (which revolves around a typically patronising French view of the Belgians) can be misinterpreted as overtly racist.  Even though the Belgians are world-renowned for their generous, self-deprecating sense of humour (lol), something tells me that this film is unlikely to be as well-received in Belgium as in France.  The film’s main strength - Benoît Poelvoorde’s hilarious portrayal of a rabid Francophobe - is also its main weakness.  The caricature is so grotesque, so over-the-top, that it not only robs the film of any sense of reality, but it also masks the more subtle humorous contributions from the other actors.  (A propos, the same applies to Karin Viard’s coiffure nightmare, which looks like something out of a 1950s sci-fi B-movie.)

Critical reaction to Rien à declarer has been generally lukewarm, although this is probably to be expected in the light of Boon’s previous runaway success.  Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis would have been an extremely hard act to follow for any director, and yet Dany Boon makes a fairly decent fist of it.  Admittedly the humour is somewhat more scattergun and prone to juvenile vulgarity than in the previous film, but most of the gags hit the spot.  Whilst Poelvoorde comes close to turning this into a one-man (and even one-gag) show, he is irresistibly funny and is effectively partnered with Boon in a Francis Veber-like double act (reminiscent of the now legendary pairing of Gérard Depardieu with Pierre Richard).  Rien à declarer is unlikely to do much for Franco-Belgian relations and is perhaps a little too silly for its own good, but if you can make allowance for its occasional shots of lavatory humour and take the egregious racial stereotyping in the spirit in which it was intended, it makes an enjoyable rib-tickling romp.  If this doesn’t cause Belgium to put back its border controls and declare war on France nothing will.

© James Travers 2011

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