Tout de suite maintenant (2016)
Directed by Pascal Bonitzer

Film Review

For his seventh feature as a director, Pascal Bonitzer turns his critical gaze on the world of high finance and crafts an intricate drama denouncing the attitudes and morality of those whose sole preoccupation in life is to make as much money as they can in the shortest possible time. Tout de suite maintenant is as slickly directed and densely written as Bonitzer's previous films but has much less denunciatory punch than you might think and tends to become a little weighed down by its plot complexities, which struggle to sustain the many interweaving storylines, with a plethora of thinly sketched characters that are barely more than transparent archetypes.  Whilst it's not quite as engrossing as some of the director's earlier work - Rien sur Robert (1999), Le Grand alibi (2008) - this latest Bonitzer offering has much to commend it, not least of which is its stunning cast.  

Taking the lead in an uncharacteristically (for Bonitzer) female-centric film is the director's daughter Agathe Bonitzer, who is cast against type as a determined high flier and consequently struggles to make her character particularly convincing.  The same applies to Vincent Lacoste who is even more ill-at-ease and suffers most from the thinly developed characterisation.  The rest of the cast are, by contrast, unimaginatively assigned to the kind of roles they are most identified with.  Jean-Pierre Bacri is, as ever, the middle-aged grump with a huge sack of chips on his shoulder; Lambert Wilson is the smooth, ruthless manipulator of the kind who would sell his grandmother for the price of meal; Isabelle Huppert is the prim ice maiden dissatisfied with her empty bourgeois existence.  The performances are generally hard to fault, but a script that is pretty weak on characterisation doesn't exactly allow any cast member to shine, so Tout de suite maintenant rapidly becomes a somewhat lacklustre ensemble piece - pleasing to watch, but hardly memorable.

Film Synopsis

Nora Sator is a young woman in her early thirties who is determined to make it to the top in her new career in high finance.  On learning that her boss, Barsac, once worked with her father, Serge, Nora suspects that this was the reason why she was given her present job.  She decides to keep to herself the fact that her father now devotes himself entirely to pure research, having long since turned his back on the world of commerce.  Nora has none of her father's scruples and is prepared to resort to any means to advance her career.  She isn't put off when she meets Barsac's wife Solveig, which is visibly depressed with her privileged but empty existence.   Nora runs into some difficulty with her colleague Xavier when they work together to negotiate an important contract.  Business and family matters soon become entangled when Xavier begins to take an interest in Nora's sister, an aspiring artist...