La Vie est un long fleuve tranquille (1988)
Directed by Étienne Chatiliez

Film Review

It was with La Vie est un long fleuve tranquille that Étienne Chatiliez, a radio editor-turned-TV ad maker, made his auspicious directing debut, a critical and box office hit that earned him instant recognition as one of the emerging talents in French cinema of the late 1980s.  The film received no fewer than six César nominations, winning awards in the categories of Best First Film, Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress (Hélène Vincent) and Most Promising Actress (Catherine Jacob).  It also introduced audiences to a fresh-faced talent (then just a boy of thirteen) who would, a decade later, become one of the most familiar and most-liked faces in French cinema - Benoît Magimel.

Starting with an improbable baby-swapping premise that pre-dates cinema by some years (as anyone familiar with the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta HMS Pinafore or the Mark Twain novel The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson will know), La Vie est un long fleuve tranquille develops into a cogent and pretty wicked satire on the social divide in French society.  The film begins by contrasting two completely different families.  First, there is the contented bourgeois Le Quesnoy family, whose children dutifully obey their parents and sing happy-clappy songs beside their church minister.  Then there is the down-at-heel Groseille family, who live in a cramped flat and live off meagre state benefits and the spoils of petty larceny.  Here, the father is bitter and crude, the mother is vulgar, and the children undisciplined louts.  Both families are equally repulsive and equally comical - as outrageously stereotyped as possible.

It is only after the two families have been established that the fun begins.  It turns out that both the Le Quesnoys and the Groseilles have a young child that is not their own.  The less well-off family naturally take advantage of the situation, and the richer family sees this as a Heaven-sent opportunity to do some moral good, so everyone is happy.  What could possibly go wrong?  What neither family expects is the disruptive influence the newly returned offspring (Magimel) will bring to his adopted household, like a tiger cub placed in a small box of domestic kittens.  This is when things become very nasty and unpredictable - and every opportunity for humour is mined ruthlessly by the film's authors.

La Vie est un long fleuve tranquille was something of an oddity for its time - a mainstream film without a single big name actor in the cast list.  Instead, its director assembled a cast from theatre actors he admired and meticulously chosen non-professionals, some of whom went on to become well-known screen actors, most notably Hélène Vincent.  Despite the lack of a leading star, the film attracted an impressive audience of 4.1 million when it was first released in France in 1988.  This was surpassed by Chatiliez's third and four features, Le Bonheur est dans le pré (1995) and Tanguy (2001), although neither of these films has anything like the charm, sophistication and unflagging mischievous fun of the director's debut feature.  Only Chatiliez's second film, Tatie Danielle (1990), is anywhere near as original and satisfying.

Film Synopsis

The Groseilles and the Le Quesnoys are two typical French families living in the same region of north France but they could not be more different.  At the lower end of the social spectrum, the permanently hard-up Groseilles live in social housing that is inadequate for their needs and resort to petty crime to make ends meet.  By contrast, the affluent Le Quesnoys lead a comfortable life in a posh middleclass neighbourhood, the mother occupying herself with good works for the community whilst the father draws an ample stipend as an executive for the regional power company.  The two families know nothing of each other's existence and probably would never have come into contact if it hadn't been for a young nurse named Josette.  It was she who took it into her head, twelve years previoiusly, to swap two newly born babies after breaking up with her boyfriend, a paediatric surgeon named Dr Mavial - one baby a Le Quesnoys the other a Groseille.

For twelve years Josette has clung to the hope that Dr Mavial will leave his wife to marry her, but when she realises she is deluding herself she decides to have her revenge - revealing the baby swap in the hope of  disgracing her lover.  On hearing the news, the Groseilles waste no time in extorting a large sum of cash from the Le Quesnoys in return for their long-lost son, Maurice.  For their part, the Le Quesnoys show magnanimity and decide to allow the other swapped child, Bernadette, to go on living with them.  It seems to be the best way out of a very tricky situation, but, as the Le Quesnoys soon discover, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions...