Les Invités de mon père (2010)
Directed by Anne Le Ny

Film Review

Anne Le Ny's eagerly awaited follow up to her well-received debut feature Ceux qui restent (2007) is another compelling drama dealing with fraught human relationships in a sensitive and mature way.   At a superficial level, Les Invités de mon père appears to be about the conflict between humanitarian ideals and the constraints of bourgeois conformity.  Just how far can one go in supporting noble causes before one's own notions of decorum and desire for personal comfort become threatened?  The film turns out to be much more subtle and ambiguous than this, the crux of the story being the problematic child-parent relationship in adulthood, specifically the obligations that parents and children have towards one another late in life.  Do parents have the right to disinherit their children, even if they have no need of the wealth they will inherit?  And are children obliged to accept the whims of their parents, no matter how eccentric and destructive these may be?  The film offers no easy answers but raises many interesting questions, of the kind which most of us will have to deal with at some time in our lives.

As with her first film, Anne Le Ny assembles a superlative cast who more than do justice to her nuanced and insightful screenplay.  Fabrice Luchini and Karin Viard are superb as the bourgeois siblings who, speared on the horns of a moral dilemma, must struggle with their consciences and class prejudices whilst their father (an excellent Michel Aumont) makes a bonfire of long cherished middleclass taboos.  Luchini is particularly brilliant in this film, less mannered and theatrical than in many of his previous screen portrayals, far more down to earth and convincing.  He handles the film's wry comedy as effortlessly as its darker, more dramatic moments, and he makes an effective contrast with the slightly hysterical Viard, who is well-chosen to deliver some badly needed comic relief.  Although their characters are far less well developed, Valérie Benguigui and Veronica Novak both succeed in giving them substance, without distracting from the main thrust of the story, which is the deteriorating relationship between the father Lucien and his two children. 

Les Invités de mon père broaches some weighty and timely issues (the treatment of illegal immigrants continues to be one of the hottest topics in France), but Anne Le Ny avoids getting bogged down in political posturing and instead focuses on the human implications of becoming so involved in humanitarian causes that family relationships come under threat.  Her film is not particularly profound but it is engaging and extremely well-acted, and also refreshingly honest in admitting that, in real life, there are no easy solutions to complex moral dilemmas.  As any French chef or (immigration minister) will tell you, on ne fait pas d'omelette sans casser des oeufs.

Film Synopsis

Lucien Paumelle has dedicated his life to humanitarian causes.   Now in his eighties and retired, he devotes his energies to helping illegal immigrants.  His two grown-up children, Arnaud and Babette, are appalled when they discover that he intends to go through with a marriage of convenience, so that a Moldavian woman, Tatiana, can avoid be deported back to her home country with her young daughter.   Arnaud and Babette take an instant dislike to Tatiana and soon have good reason to think that she is manipulating their father for her own benefit.  How are they to react when Lucien tells them he intends to disinherit them and leave his entire estate to Tatiana?