Voir la mer (2011)
Directed by Patrice Leconte

Film Review

After a decade in which he has notched up almost twice as many critical failures as successes, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Patrice Leconte's career as a filmmaker is in a state of terminal decline.  Certainly, his last three films have done little for his reputation.  Going by the facile Les Bronzés 3 - amis pour la vie (2006) (God alone knows how this managed to draw an audience of ten million) and the pretty execrable La Guerre des miss (2009), it would seem that the old Leconte magic has well and truly run its course.  This might explain why, for his latest film, Patrice Leconte has performed a wholesale snatch and grab raid on his earlier successes - Tandem (1987), Le Mari de la coiffeuse (1990) and Tango (1993) - in a desperate bid to revive his flagging creativity.  But, as the poet said, if you can't plagiarise yourself, who can you plagiarise?

Voir la mer is certainly a more laudable film than Leconte's past few offerings, a conventional road movie which explores the conflict between friendship and desire from a quintessentially Gallic perspective.  The film is hardly groundbreaking - at times, it seems to be a blatant homage of Bertrand Blier's Les Valseuses (1974) (albeit one that neatly sidesteps Blier's penchant for seedy black humour) - but its lack of originality does not prevent it from being an engaging piece of lighthearted nonsense.  The film would probably have been better received than it has been if the road movie genre hadn't already been pretty well mined out in France in recent years.  Sebastien Lifshitz's Plein Sud (2009) and Pascal-Alex Vincent's Donne-moi la main (2009) cover the same ground more authentically than Leconte, who consequently ends up looking like a derelict struggling to climb aboard a bandwagon that has already left town.  Despite this, the genre does allow Leconte to play to his strengths and the film does have some pleasing echoes of his earlier films, through its distinctive blend of sensual poetry and laidback humour.

Nicolas Giraud and Clément Sibony are terrific as the two main protagonists, a pair of chalk-and-cheese brothers whose amusing interplay amply makes up for the lack of substance in the narrative.  Completing the cute ménage-a-trois is former TV presenter and weather girl Pauline Lefèvre, coping reasonably well in her first substantial screen role.  It is mainly thanks to this youthful and likeable cast that the film manages to keep itself going and avoids stalling like the clapped out banger it is through its manifest lack of content and ambition.  Voir la mer falls way short of being a masterpiece but it is not without charm.  Whilst it may struggle to hold its own when set aside Leconte's previous great films (many of which are now undisputed classics of French cinema), it does bear its author's unmistakable imprint and does not insult the intelligence of the spectator - which is more than can be said for most of the films he has churned out over the past decade.  Perhaps we shouldn't give up on Patrice Leconte just yet.  There's still life in the vieux chien.

Film Synopsis

Nicolas and Clément, two brothers from Montbard, Burgundy, decide to spend their summer holidays with their mother at Saint-Jean-de-Luz.  Once they have acquired a second-hand campervan, they take to the road in a mood of fraternal bonhomie.  The last thing the two brothers expected was to come across an attractive young woman named Prudence who would inflame their passions and get them to change their itinerary.  As the trio head for the coast, they savour the adventures that lie ahead.  Who says pleasures cannot be shared?