Film Review
For his first solo bash as a director, Gilles Lellouche takes his inspiration
from the classic British movie
The
Full Monty (1997) but ends up delivering an aquatic ensemble buddy
movie that struggles to keep its head above water.
Le Grand bain
(a.k.a.
Sink or Swim) was one of the French mainstream hits of 2018,
attracting an impressive audience of 4.3 million and garnering favourable
reviews from a wide section of the French press. It even managed to
obtain ten César nominations in 2019 - an incredible feat for such
an overtly commercial film. How could
a film that made such a big splash in France fail to muster not much more
than a light shower outside its borders?
This is not the first film that Lellouche has helmed. In 2004, he co-directed
Narco with Tristan Aurouet, after having made a number of short films
and pop videos. Since the early 2000s, he has pursued a successful
career in front of the camera and is now one of French cinema's most popular
and most highly paid actors, at home in a wide range of genres from
thriller (
À bout portant,
L'Enquête), to drama (
Les Petits mouchoirs,
Rock'N'Roll)
and comedy (
Ma part du gâteau,
Plonger). With
Le Grand bain, Gilles Lellouche makes
a determined effort to forge a new career path, and whilst the film has many
shortcomings, there are good reasons for thinking that a high-profile filmmaking
career may lie ahead of him.
For his grand debut, Lellouche could not have assembled a more impressive
ensemble cast. Mathieu Amalric, Jean-Hugues Anglade, Guillaume Canet,
Benoît Poelvoorde, Marina Foïs and Virginie Efira form a roll
call of raw talent that most French filmmakers would sell their grandmothers
into slavery for. With such a strong cast, Lellouche could hardly fail
to grab a major box office success, but in his single-minded pursuit of mainstream
popularity he passes up a golden opportunity to deliver a genuinely worthy
peice of cinema, one that is likely to stand the test of time.
The most unforgivable failing of
Le Grand bain is that it is such
an obvious and lazy rip-off of
The Full Monty (the film's French trailer
went out of its way to make the comparison). This is apparent not only
in its central premise (an unlikely assortment of losers banding together
in the hope of regaining their self-respect) but also in its knowing feminine
artiness, which is brilliantly ironic in the British film, far less so here.
The issue of male identity at the turn of the third millennium is as pertinent
today as it was twenty years ago, when Robert Carlyle and his mates from
Sheffield resorted to taking off their clothes in an effort to regain their
lost self-esteem. But rather than giving the premise a contemporary
French twist with a deeper meaning, Lellouche is content merely to rehash
the concept as a shallow populist crowd-pleaser, without even attempting
to understand what lies beneath it.
The film's lack of substance is nowhere more evident than in the excruciating
dearth of characterisation. We are never given the chance to see the
eight male protagonists as individuals - we only see them as an ensemble,
a collection of familiar uglies that only seem to exist as part of a group.
As the most sensitive and fully developed member of the band, Philippe
Katerine stands out from the crowd and gives the most consistently engaging
performance (for which he was rewarded in 2019 with the César for
Best Supporting Actor); his male co-stars mostly fail to be anything more
than bland imitations of characters they have played far more successfully
in other films. Leïla Bekhti's bossy coach is just a shouty mouth
on wheels - she is funny at first but soon becomes irritating, just another
wearisome stock character: the failed sportsperson who takes her frustration
out on the easily cowed unfortunates she is coaching.
Though full of good intentions, the script struggles to make the grade,
either as comedy or drama. Its emotionality is painfully forced and
the lack of character depth denudes the film of all but a thin veneer of
charm and poignancy. Lellouche's mise-en-scène shows far more
promise than his writing. It is hard not to be wowed by the balletic
fluidity of the camerawork, which brings an arresting visual poetry to a
number of sequences that momentarily recalls Jean Vigo's astonishing work
on
Taris (1931) and
L'Atalante (1934). Alas, these
infrequent inspired interludes aside,
Le Grand bain has precious little
to offer true connoisseurs of French cinema. Overlong and shockingly derivative
for the most part, this forced feel-good offering relies too heavily on superficial
crowd-pleasing tactics to make much of in impact. It just washes over
you, like water off a duck's back.
© James Travers 2019
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Film Synopsis
Bertrand, Laurent, Marcus, Simon, Thierry, John, Bastile and Avanish - eight
men from very different backgrounds - are all beginning to find life a bit
too much for them. Family breakdown, professional failings, depression
and alcoholism have taken their toll and now they face a bleak future, each
man caught in the grip of a fierce mid-life crisis. On the spur of
the moment these eight unfortunates each elects to join a synchronised swimming
team, to participate in a world championship. The eight aspiring swimmers
show little promise of success but their coaches - Delpine, a former champion,
and Amanda, an ex-sportswoman now confined to a wheelchair - are determined
to make something of them. Driven to the limit of what they are capable
of by their determined trainers, the eight men begin to find a new purpose
in their lives and at last recover their self-esteem and zest for living...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.