Film Review
For his promising first feature
Les Cachetonneurs, director Denis
Dercourt turns in a pleasing low-key comedy which, although somewhat unpolished
and sluggish, provides a wryly entertaining portrait of a band of disparate
musicians who have to freelance to practice their art. Dercourt's ample experience
as a musician (he teaches at the Strasbourg Music Conservatory) was put to
good use, making up for his lack of experience as a director. Whilst
his first film is a little rough around the edges it is true to life and
instantly engaging. On its original release in France in 1998, the
film had mostly positive reviews and received the Grand prix Passion d'or
at the Aubagne Film Festival.
Where
Les Cachetonneurs is strongest is in its authentic depiction
of a group of very different individuals struggling to hold together as a
team in spite of the forces that are gradually driving them apart.
Despite their innumerable personal problems and barely contained enmities,
somehow their intense love of music is strong enough to keep them together
and preserve the unity of the group. The film benefits from an intelligent,
considered screenplay and some strong performances from an ensemble of talented
but fairly unknown young actors. One of these, Pierre Lacan, would
later go on to become a film director himself with
Légitime défense
(2011).
Denis Dercourt followed his promising debut feature with an idiosyncratic
melodrama involving a priest and a prostitute,
Lise et André
(2000). It wasn't until he directed
La Tourneuse de pages
(2008), a slick psychological thriller highly evocative of Claude Chabrol's
best work, that he came to be regarded seriously as a filmmaker, and in his
subsequent work -
Demain dès
l'aube (2008),
La Chair de ma chair (2013),
Die Lehrerin (2019) - he shows
an increasing fascination with the darker places of the human psyche.
© James Travers 2001
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Denis Dercourt film:
Lise et André (2000)
Film Synopsis
Roberto, a young freelance musician, agrees to give a New Year's Eve concert
of chamber music and Viennese waltzes at an aristocrat's château in
Normandy. For this, he assembles a sextet of musicians from his friends,
but he soon realises he has serious problems to contend with. His flutist,
Thérèse, is nine months' pregnant and might give birth at any
moment; his cellist, Lionel, is a kleptomaniac; his viola player, Martial
is hypersensitive and flares up whenever the mood takes him; his violist,
Diana, has an inferiority complex; and his clarinettist cannot read a note
of music. To make matters worse, the conductor, Svarowski, has
yet to turn up...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.