Film Review
Actor-turned-director Michel Boujenah followed up his popular directorial debut feature
Père
et fils (2003) with this engaging but pretty lightweight
portrait of friendship between a group of middle-aged people, viewed from a slightly cynical
angle.
It is a variation on the kind of 'greying buddy movie' that has become popular in French
cinema in recent years, following the immense success of Marc
Esposito's similarly themed
Le Coeur des hommes (2003).
Even though the characters are a little younger than in Esposito's film, and one of them is a woman
(Mathilde Seigner), it's pretty well the same formulae - a group of individuals
who have been friends for years come together to help each other out
through their mid-life crises.
Boujenah assembles an attractive cast which includes an all-too-brief
appearance by Philippe Noiret in his final film
role (he died not long after completing work on the film).
3 amis is an engagiing film but it fails to
make much of an impact. The situations are banal, the comedy
predictable, the storyline bland and routine. Unlike in
Boujenah's likeable first film, the characters are thinly eketched
stereotypes, although the three principals do their absolute best to
make it work and succeed in squeezing a few laughs out of a mediocre
screenplay.
© James Travers 2009
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Michel Boujenah film:
Le Coeur en braille (2016)
Film Synopsis
Claire, César and Baptiste have been the best of friends since they
were children and they remain so to this day. Now that they have reached
middle-age, they need each other more than ever. When Baptiste's wife
tells them of her intention to leave her husband it falls to Claire and César
to break the sad news to their friend. As Baptiste sinks into depression,
César hires a call girl to cheer him up. Not realising that
the young woman who enters his life unexpectedly is a prostitute, Baptiste
falls madly in love with her. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her friends,
Claire is busy looking for her natural mother, whose identity has so far
been kept from her. When they learn of this, Baptiste and César
decide to give her a helping hand, but quickly regret getting involved...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.