Film Review
In an era that has become pathologically obsessed with youth it is
refreshing to come across a film that dares to deflect our attention to
one reality of life that we seem to be finding harder to face up to,
namely the prospect of growing old and how we should spend our
declining years. For his second feature director Stéphane
Robelin offers a bittersweet yet true-to-life comedy in which five
sprightly septuagenarians come up with an imaginative alternative to
the terror of the retirement home: a bourgeois equivalent to the kind
of hippy commune they may well have belonged to in their youth.
With a good-looking young live-in nurse to look after them (and
supply Viagra for those who need it), it looks as if these enterprising
oldsters have hit on the perfect solution to their accommodation and
personal needs - until the bonds of friendship start to fray and
several embarrassing skeletons begin popping out of the woodwork...
Et si on vivait tous ensemble?
isn't perhaps the most original or subtle of comedies but it does
provide a thoughtful and thought-provoking meditation on that one phase
of our lives that, as the film rightly points out, we never get round
to planning for. We plan for our families, our careers, our
retirement, even our funerals. But the one thing we overlook is
those last few years of life that are left to us, which is when we are
likely to end up at the tender mercies of others - well-meaning
relatives or, worse, the state. Getting together with a group of
like-minded friends in the same age-bracket and setting-up a commune is
as good a solution as any other, and the idea may well catch on after
this film. And who wouldn't wish to join a commune that lists
Jane Fonda (a.k.a. Barbarella) as one of its members?
Just how Stéphane Robelin was able to cajole a cinematic icon of
Fonda's standing into playing a decaying 70-something in a modest
French comedy that will probably never be seen in her own country is
anyone's guess but the actress deserves credit for doing so. The
same goes for another cinematic diva, Géraldine Chaplin, who,
like Fonda, has only enjoyed a passing acquaintance with French cinema
in the course of a busy career. To French audiences, the other
three grey-haired principals are just as familiar and just as fondly
loved: Pierre Richard, Guy Bedos and Claude Rich. It's an almost
miraculous ensemble but what is most remarkable about each of these
acting legends is how ordinary and down-to-earth they appear in this
film. Fonda has seldom given a performance that is so
heart-breakingly authentic and her four co-stars are just as
convincing, barely faint echoes of their former blazing screen
personas. Praise is also owed to the sixth member of this
improbable ensemble, the talented German actor Daniel Brühl, star
of such films as
Good Bye Lenin! (2003) and
Inglourious Basterds (2009).
Brühl plays a cute ethnology student who is hired as a private
nurse-cum-peacemaker for the five fractious wrinklies, and clearly gets
more than he bargained for.
The sex lives of the over-seventies is not something that gets much of
an airing in any medium, even in these liberated times - perhaps
because no one believes such a thing exists - but this is one red hot taboo that
Robelin isn't willing to sidestep in his film. This is perhaps
the most daring ingredient of
Et si
on vivait tous ensemble?, and the source of a rich vein of
humour that its author mines pretty ruthlessly (hence the over-extended
run of Viagra gags). How readily we identify with Brühl's
obvious embarrassment as Fonda happily talks about her masturbatory
fantasies (gulp) but it is hard not to be moved by the penetrating
honesty with which the film tackles this most sensitive of subjects.
The same applies equally to the allusions to death and dying, the
hulking great mastodon in the room that no one can ignore for
long. With two of the main characters afflicted with
life-threatening conditions and one gradually succumbing to senility,
the grim realties of growing old are never far from sight. Yet it
is the proximity of death that gives the protagonists a renewed zest
for living and makes them appear as if they are enjoying a second
adolescence. There's perhaps some truth in the saying that the
last drops of a good bottle of wine are always the sweetest.
Robelin's film may run a little short in tact and profundity, but it
strikes a chord and achieves what it intended, which is to get us to
contemplate the uncontemplatable, with a wry but tender smile.
© James Travers 2014
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Film Synopsis
Annie, Jean, Claude, Albert and Jeanne have been firm friends for more
than forty years. They have each lived full and happy lives, but
when their memories begin to falter and the prospect of moving into a
retirement home rears its ugly head, they decide to take a stand
against convention. Not for them the prospect of fading away in
miserable anonymity. They will live together and share their
declining years, come what may. After all, life only begins at 75!
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.