Cinema Wednesdays - Jonas Follonier
Already, the opening credits, with their neon green lettering, bear witness to a particular, rather unpleasant aesthetic. As does the accompanying music, worthy of the worst commercial answering machines. Then, an improbable first scene. Seriously, we don't believe for a second in the chance meeting of Gaspard (Félix Moati) and Laura (Laetitia Dosch), if we even understand it at all.
But the worst is yet to come. The viewer thinks: no, they didn't dare? It's the announcement of a first chapter with the title kitsch on the screen, with a slow-motion shot of a character in the background. In slow motion! It's as if the cinematographer was euphorically discovering iMovie's few options, and was experimenting for the first time. Let's get serious again: this four-part cut was really not a good idea - a «leftover from the script», according to director Antony Cordier - because the film's subject matter deserves a better form.
The story is indeed unusual and interesting: Gaspard has to go and meet his family for the second wedding of his father, an extravagant man who built their big zoo house. Gaspard grew up surrounded by wildcats, penguins and sheep. He then distanced himself from his father and siblings - his mother died after being attacked by a tiger - for an obscure reason that will form the great suspense of the story. For an equally obscure reason, Gaspard offers to pay the unknown Laura he meets at the beginning of the film to accompany him to the wedding.
The fake couple's arrival at home, the zoo, the family members - everything takes on a very strange odor. In fact, the audience fluctuates between laughter and bewilderment. There's no shortage of comic effects, and they're quite successful. Like when Peggy, the father's new wife-to-be, says to Laura by way of a welcome message: «there's a caribou that's just been born, it's got two heads: do you want to see it?» Or, in a hilarious scene already featured in the trailer, when Gaspard sees his father again, played by the excellent Johan Heldenbergh, who while talking to his children cures his eczema by bathing naked in an aquarium.
The other characters are no less burlesque. Coline, Gaspard's enigmatic sister, permanently wears a cape made from the skin of a bear she grew up with. Worse still, she believes herself to be a bear, or at least part of her. Laura, Gaspard's impromptu girlfriend, has a voice reminiscent of a slightly younger, more naive Catherine Frot, and keeps saying «in fact» when asked about the couple she forms with Gaspard.
Under the guise of comedy, Gaspard goes to the wedding is soon understood as a true drama. Its subject matter is difficult to grasp, but the themes are present from the outset, like characters hidden in bushes. Family love, platonic love, carnal love, friendship - where are the limits? The epilogue breaks with the grotesque nature of the quadriptych, and manages to touch the viewer by providing music that is finally admissible - an operatic aria with an orchestral background - and a denouement that won't «spoil» anything: «the hardest thing in life is to find someone in the world you love more than your family.»
Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com
Photo credit: Pyramide Distribution © Jeannick Gravelines
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