Pretty Good

Crappy film

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

spoil alerts: I guess i must be the only one who saw this movie beyond the immigrate and social class issues that the film talks about. I am talking about the many psychological points that i thought the director covered here.It felt to me that the director's intent was to to show how the children have tried to impress their dad all their lives so much that they are unable to know who they are and when a stranger comes to take that love from their dad, they feel cheated. It is very cleverly explaining that one must never try to be someone else for the sake of someone else's love. Or you will lose your own self.As for the dad, he is perceived as someone selfless. Because he has been an activist all his life. But he has been a selfish parent all his life. And the director here i think wants to question the notion of selfishness and selflessness. In psychology, we now start to realize that people who have been social activists for example but have often left their children on their own, were not really aware that they were subconsciously not willing to commit to a family of their own ( often due to their own unresolved childhood issues) and they tried to escape it by throwing themselves in their careers.Finally i think it questioned the motive of the dad that throws himself in a relation with a person that has 3 times his age. A man who has it all intellectually but seemingly feels very poor in terms of love. The love that his children has for him, does not seem to be of value to him.He only cares for this young person's love. And it asks the question has this man loved with his heart and flesh at all? or was it enough? The fact that he can't stop himself from throwing all he has for this young woman shows how desperate he is to be loved for being just a simple man with manhood needs. It also explores the sexual needs of a man at a certain age and how it is viewed by his own children. I thought it has an excellent movie that had many depths and is extremely well thought out and put together, touching many sensitive subjects without judging them.

The more I see of Fabrice Luchini, the more he impresses me. I don't think I have ever encountered a comic actor with a better sense of timing and pathos. Chaplin was legendary for playing human tragedy absolutely straight, and making us laugh despite ourselves, no matter how much we might really want to cry. Luchini has the same incredible skill. A twist of the mouth, an arch of the eyebrow, a lowering of the gaze, and disaster is transformed into hilarity.In his period pieces like Molière or Beaumarchais he was superb, but you have to know your French classics to really appreciate his achievement. In this contemporary gem we see him at his very best. The would be PC tolerant son of an aging radical, he has to balance his political correctness against his bourgeois ideas of family and social order, all the while dealing with his rôle as a husband, a father and a successful lawyer.The dialogue is understated - there are no belly laughs in this comedy, but as the plot unrolls, we get a real feel of the tensions inherent in present day urban living - family demands, career demands, social requirements, socio-political issues, you name it. A sense of humour is given us to cope with the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." Fabrice Luchini handles it all with impeccable restraint.Restraint goes out the window, though, for Karin Viard in the rôle of his sister. Her over-the-top reaction to the family situation results in a torrid relationship with her partner in her medical practice that provides the near slapstick relief that the plot demands.Supporting cameos by a couple of up and coming young child actors - Max Renaudin and Emma Siniavski serve to provide the gilding of the lily.Watch it and rejoice.

An interesting glossy French bourgeois comedy that has serious overtones. This is a study of the blindness of do-gooding, the selfishness of an old man, seeking to rediscover his youth, the limits of charity. A wealthy man, a retired doctor, takes in an eastern European woman and her young daughter and marries her so she can work in France and eventually have secure status. Little by little he falls in love with her and they become sexually involved despite the great gap between their ages. From the beginning the man's daughter and son find the woman offensive, crude, annoying. Only later they realize that she is threatening to destroy their sense of family and cut them off from their father and their patrimony. Fabrice Lucchini has never been better than he is here as the worldly-wise lawyer son Arnaud Paumelle, who at first grants the father the right to do what he wants, but then reaches the point where he must put his foot down. Karin Viard is excellent as Arnaud's doctor sister, whose confusion at the family disruption is expressed by an affair with her young male associate. Michel Aumont is solid as the retired doctor father Lucien, who marries at the age of eighty. The issues are handled with subtlety, despite the overall comic tone. (Allociné 2.6/63 shows solid approval.) This is an example of French film comedy at its most intelligent.

A refreshing look at most every subject it covers, and the field is a broad one: baby- boomers and aging parents; adult brothers and sisters; the strains of immigration on Western societies. The set-up is cute but not revolutionary – a humanitarian in his 80s allows a young Moldovan woman and her daughter to move in with him to help regularize her immigration status. Soon thereafter he marries her.A Hollywood movie would have taken this premise and played it for all its (admittedly funny) sitcom elements. And this French version has some fun with that idea, too – all the more when Dad's status as a new Viagra user becomes clear.But the beauty of this film is that the real story belongs to the old man's son and daughter. They respond in unexpected ways to a series of moves by Dad that isolate them from his life and their inheritance, and in doing so, grow closer to each other. Sibling rivalry and recriminations are dealt with, yes, but over café au lait, or vodka and caviar, or in the more emotionally charged roles when they themselves must play unpopular parent. But growing up means accepting the loss of your parents and, if you're lucky, coming to really know your adult siblings.The ending is fitting but unexpected and, in another refreshing un-American manner, deals with a solution that many would find politically incorrect. This film reaffirms family solidarity as more important than money or modernism. While every character is human and sympathetically portrayed, there's an intriguing sociological subtext too.From an American point of view, this film is foreign in the best sense of the word. It's entertaining in a manner Hollywood fears has no payoff: a movie about adults realizing problems, even if borne in childhood, must be solved in an adult manner. And that can mean some good people get hurt. They only real villains are our own outmoded ways of dealing with our issues. Other than City Island, can you think of another American film this year that seconds this idea, even before you add humor?