Une époque formidable... (1991) - film review

When Michel Berthier loses his executive job with American Bed he is unable to tell his family that he is now unemployed.  He manages to keep up the pretence of still being in work until his financial resources dry up.  When his wife Juliette finally does find out, she throws him out their home.  Too proud to go back, Michel tries to make a new start, but he ends up living on the streets, with no money and apparently no future.  He makes friends with three homeless men – Toubib, Crayon and Mimosa – who attempt to use Michel’s naivety for their own gain.  To make some money, the four friends plan to steal mattresses from a warehouse owned by Michel’s former company…

For his fourth film as a director, Gérard Jugnot chose a subject which has become one of the most important social issues of our time – that of homelessness.  As the film shows, with stark simplicity, it is all too easy for any one of us in this apparently secure society to find ourselves amongst the ranks of the “sans domicile fixe”, living on the streets, with none of the comforts of modern life, and none of the benefits of a civilised world.  Whilst this may be an apt subject for a hard-hitting social drama it would be a brave director indeed who would attempt to make light of the situation and to frame it as a comedy-drama.  Yet this is what Jugnot attempts to do and, to a large extent, he is successful.  He uses his flair for comedy and his keen understanding of human relationships to tell his story with compassion and poignant realism, and it stands as one of his best films to date.

Whilst Une époque formidable may not have the impact of Frank Capra’s similarly named It’s A Wonderful Life, it functions on similar lines and allows us, very naturally, to engage emotionally with characters who are forced to live on the edge, even galvanising us to do something to support the cause of homeless people in real life.  Jugnot’s simple, no-nonsense directorial style is well suited to this kind of character-based drama in which the talents of the film’s lead actors (an excellent Richard Bohringer and Jugnot himself) are used to great effect.  Perhaps the film could have gone further in its portrayal of the hardship endured by the homeless instead of giving an artificially sunny view of life on the streets, where the warm solidarity and camaraderie of groups are shown, but not the blistering solitude and vulnerability of individual men and women.  Although it doesn’t give us anywhere near the full picture, what the film does show is sufficient to leave a mark on the spectator, giving a sobering glimpse of a world into which any one of us may tumble with worrying ease at any moment.

© James Travers 2004

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