Comme un avion (2015)
Directed by Bruno Podalydès

Film Review

Since his first film Versailles Rive-Gauche (1992), Bruno Podalydès has carved out a respectable niche for himself as an unconventional filmmaker with a quaintly idiosyncratic view of life and a generous fascination with the eccentricities of his fellow man.  His free-spirited approach to cinema (which had led some to compare him with Alain Resnais) shows itself as vividly in his light comedies such as Liberté-Oléron (2001) as in his rare genre offerings, such as the off-the-wall murder mystery Le Mystère de la chambre jaune (2003), and linking his diverse output is a relentless optimism and a willingness to look on the absurdities of life with a clown's insouciance.

Bruno Podalydès is not only a consummate film auteur, he is also an accomplished actor, but to date, he has preferred to play only a supporting role in  his films, allowing his brother Denis to take the lead.  In his latest film, Comme un avion (a.k.a. The Sweet Escape) Podalydès breaks with his self-imposed convention and places himself in the lead role for what is obviously his most personal film to date - a kind of Three Men in a Boat meets The History of Mr Polly, in which a bored graphic designer with an aeroplane obsession goes off on a wild voyage of discovery - in a kayak.  The fifty-year-old fugitive's expedition soon lands him in an out-of-the-way spot where his yearning for escape is assisted by a romp with two feisty women who represent his naive concept of freedom.

Short on plot but brimming with charm, character depth and meaning, Comme un avion is Podalydès' most engaging film to date, and it helps that the director gathers around him a colourful ensemble of equally free-spirited souls that includes Sandrine Kiberlain, Agnès Jaoui and Michel Vuillermoz, as well as rising star Vimala Pons and, of course, brother Denis.  Noémie Lvovsky puts in a humorous cameo appearance and Pierre Arditi has fun playing his double as an abusive angler.  Of course, the film's main star is none of the above but the gorgeous river settings in the Burgundy and Centre-Val de Loire regions of France, which give the film its poetry and heartaching sense of freedom.

Not so much a case of a man in the throes of a mid-life crisis as one experiencing a spiritual rebirth by connecting with nature and real people, Comme un avion strongly evokes Jean Renoir's Partie de campagne (1936) in its second half.  As in Renoir's film, the river both symbolises the ineluctable flow of life and provides a physical and psychological escape from bourgeois conformity, to a life that is richer, happier and more fulfilled, or so it seems.  We don't have to peer too deeply beneath the sunny surface to see the melancholia that lies beneath, and whilst we can hardly help being uplifted by Bruno Podalydès' latest flight of fancy, it also leaves a delicate aching sensation in your heart.

Film Synopsis

Michel is a graphics designer in his fifties.  He dreams of the French aviator Jean Mermoz when he takes to his scooter, and yet he has never piloted an aeroplane.  One day, he catches sight of some photographs of kayaks and is struck by their resemblance to aircraft fuselage.  Without his wife knowing it, Michel buys a kayak, with all the accessories that go with it, and is soon planning his first expedition.  Having set off down an unfamiliar stretch of river, he soon arrives at a riverside inn, where he gets to know its owner Laetitia and waitress Mila, as well as the inn's colourful clientele.  As he sets up camp that evening by the river, Michel knows it will be a wrench to move on the next day...