«I feel good» - really, Jean Dujardin?

Cinema Wednesdays - Jonas Follonier

In this farce, which resembles a ten-minute sketch gone wrong, Jean Dujardin plays Jacques, a lost man convinced of the benefits of capitalism. The man is nothing, and dreams of being a big boss. Worse, he knows he's will being, it is convinced that it must be, that it cannot be that being. But he doesn't know how to do anything, especially not manual labor. And yet, it's at the doors of an Emmaüs community near Pau, run by his sister Monique, played by Yolande Moreau. There, he presented his (brilliant) idea of becoming self-employed, running a small, low-cost cosmetic surgery business.

The question is not: is it a good comedy, a successful film? Because the answer is simple, as the relatively large audience at today's screening can unanimously confirm. It's a dud of a dud. The question is: how could Dujardin, a respected actor, agree to star in such an inept film? Here, the answer is less obvious. No doubt he saw it as an opportunity to plunge back into the flesh of a disillusioned, naive and ridiculous beauf as he had done so brilliantly in OSS 117. Except that here, we're not laughing. His name may be Dujardin, but he's screwed up. Unquestionably.

Offbeat doesn't mean funny

Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern must be among those French directors who believed that creating something offbeat was enough to make it comical. It's simply a case of the contemporary belief in the absurdity of the original as a sign of success. When will they stop wasting our time with this nonsense? There's not much more to say, except that the semblance of music is unbearable, that the photography, if there is any, is akin to a shoddy documentary, and that the film paints a disastrous picture of both liberalists and organizations such as Emmaus.

If I feel good is intended as a satire of Emmanuel Macron, or Donald Trump - to whom the film obviously alludes at every turn, since it's a bad film - then this satire is not only absurd, it simply leaves you indifferent. It's impossible to get angry in your armchair, only bored. That's the worst thing that can happen to anyone. So, please, don't inflict this so-called comedy on yourself, and go and see something else that's new in theaters - there are some good ones out there. Long live cinema, which we love all the more when we know what it isn't!

Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © JD Prod - No Money Productions