«Mr. and Mrs. Adelman»

We began the month of cinema with Rock ‘n Roll, Guillaume Canet's turnip. We end the month with a film of the same ilk: a comedy in which a young Parisian bobo director directs himself and his girlfriend. In every respect, Nicolas Bedos' film is a better success than Guillaume Canet's, starting with the optics.

Like Canet, Bedos has not chosen to set the story at the same point in time as reality. Instead, the director has chosen to tell the story of a couple over time. In other words, he imagined his life with Doria Tillier from the moment they met until her death. The idea is excellent, and the choice of actors is good. The audience laughs a lot. The film works. However, it does have a number of shortcomings.

First of all, and this is obvious to every viewer, the film contains too many elements, too many ideas, too many interwoven stories... too much of everything. No less than fourteen chapters and an epilogue follow one another for a total running time of one hundred and twenty minutes. Two hours, two hours of the director's life! At the same time, far too many sequences are too short to really get to grips with the story. Studies, family, fame, drugs, illness, infidelity, it's all there. Perhaps it would have been better to choose a few aspects and explore them in greater depth.

This more than questionable choice is accompanied by an out-of-touch soundtrack. By wanting to do everything, Nicolas Bedos can't excel at everything. After all, it was Bedos himself who was responsible for the script, direction, acting and musical composition. In this film, the music is too mawkish and too heterogeneous, just like the other facets of the film. Nothing surprises, except for the excellent ending, which makes us say: «Too bad! If the whole film were like this, it would be a masterpiece!»

Then there are the anachronisms in the sets, from the furniture to the clothes. Everything seems to have been done in a hurry. The film is intended to be historically and politically significant, so let it be!

Finally, why is Nicolas Bedos taking on such a challenge, even though this is his first feature film? He's starting out in the film industry, and his first work should be about his own life! What a curious attitude! As if Bedos had to prove on screen that he has a sense of humor about himself. With plenty of sexual innuendo, of course, as this seems to be an increasingly indispensable habit in today's art. This overabundance of self-deprecation risks being quickly mistaken for self-indulgence, and rightly so.

Despite all these considerations, the film has many qualities. Both the new Dorai Tillier and the experienced Pierre Arditi and Denis Podalydes (in the excellent role of the psychologist) produce excellent cinema. The lighting is excellent. This is quality comedy. Nicolas Bedos can be proud of having dared such an artistic undertaking at his stage. And we can only wish him nothing but happiness with his beautiful sweetheart.

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