Nous finirons ensemble (2019)
Directed by Guillaume Canet

Film Review

With sequels to the unlikeliest of films now becoming all the rage, it's hardly surprising that Guillaume Canet should succumb to this fad and attempt a follow-up to his most successful film so far, the 2010 box office hit Les Petits mouchoirs.  That film not only delighted the critics, it also drew a massive audience of five million, allowing its director to make his Hollywood debut with Blood Ties (2013).  Four years on, Canet garnered further critical praise for Rock'n'Roll, a thoughtful self-reflecting meditation on the trauma of growing old.

With Nous finirons ensemble, Guillaume Canet could have consolidated his reputation further by revisiting his earlier hit film from a more authentic perspective, focusing more on his characters' inner turmoils and showing how relationships evolve with time.  This he attempts to a certain degree, but only half-heartedly and with little sign of the commitment and mature reflection that he invested in Rock'n'Roll.  Instead, Canet appears to muddle through his sequel as if it were a tedious drudge, to be completed with as little effort as possible.  The question that fixes itself firmly in your mind as you sit through this dreary compendium of badly clichéd situations is why - given the director evidently had so little enthusiasm for this film - he bothered making it in the first place.

The crowd of French A-listers that made Les Petits mouchoirs so memorable - François Cluzet, Gilles Lellouche, Marion Cotillard, Benoît Magimel, Pascale Arbillot and Laurent Lafitte - are all present and correct for this pointless replay, and mercifully they show a bit more artistry and enthusiasm than Canet does with his lame writing and direction.  In spite of the abundance of talent on display, it's patently evident that whereas the earlier film was fresh, funny and engaging, its sequel is stale, repetitive and hollow. Without amiable stars of the calibre of Lellouche and Lafitte to guide us through this morass of mediocrity cinema audiences would doubtless be beating a path towards the door marked 'Exit' faster than attendees at a youth ecologists' convention when Donald Trump parachutes unexpectedly onto the podium.

There has been no shortage of trashy, ill-conceived mainstream French comedies over the past decade, but Nous finirons ensemble at least had the potential to be something better, dealing as it does with issues that concern us all - anxieties over parenthood, the strain of relationship breakdown and the difficult passage through mid-life crisis towards old-age and the multitude of horrors that this brings on.  But rather than focus on these pertinent themes and say something worthwhile about the trauma of existence, the film's authors prefer instead merely to peddle the emptiest of platitudes, dishing out crass gags and painfully laboured comedy situations in between the most wooden and inauthentic of character moments.  It is as if Canet was on a one-man mission to prove beyond any doubt that not every film deserves to have a sequel.  If this was indeed his intention, he succeeded way beyond his wildest dreams.

Film Synopsis

With his whole world apparently falling down around him, Max retreats to his coastal hideaway in Cap Ferret in the hope of regaining his morale.  His only wish is to be alone to contemplate his future, a wish that is cruelly thwarted when a contingent of old friends suddenly shows up unannounced to celebrate his sixtieth birthday.  Max hasn't seen his friends for years and he has no particular desire to see them now, especially as they seem to pathologically intent on lifting his spirits.

Still, the impromptu invasion is well meant and Max does his best to play along with the festivities.  In the years since they last met it is clear that everyone present has been marked by some personal crisis or another - relationship breakdowns, family tragedies, career upsets.  Beneath the outward show of jollity there are sorrows and recriminations aplenty, and what is friendship but an easy masquerade to conceal the truths that dare not speak their name...?