Un Homme, un vrai

Boris (Mathieu Amalric), a wannabe filmmaker is hired to make a corporate film. On the shoot he meets Marilyne (Hélène Fillières), one of the company executives, and an unconventional romance blossoms. Before you know it, the two are married with children. While Marilyne’s career goes from strength to strength, Boris’s cinematic aspirations continually hit a dead end. Feeling saddled with childcare and suffocated, Boris prepares to leave but is beaten to it by Marilyne. Five years pass before a chance encounter in the depths of the Pyrenees Mountains. The director-writer brothers Arnaud and Jean-Marie Larrieu concocted this witty and quirky film for their first full-length feature. As the plot plays out in quasi-absurdist manner, the brothers’ comic pacing and skilful editing hold the piece together and draw out the laughs to full effect. Their film touches on some interesting contemporary issues but not without humour as they offer a unique vision of the often overlooked bizarreness of the modern world we live in. With its fast pace and all knowingness, we expect everything to fit together perfectly, but life is not always so simple. This is an unavoidable lesson for the two protagonists, who are played to perfection by the talented leads. Verbose, neurotic and gaffe prone, Amalric’s failed filmmaker could be straight out of a Woody Allen or Nanni Morretti movie. Although more recognised for his dramatic roles (Heartbeat Detector, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), Amalric flaunts his comic range here and could put forward a strong case for the most versatile, prolific and watchable actor in France today. Fillières (Lady Chatterly) effortlessly oscillates between a sulky and energetic demeanour, in perfect harmony with the film’s varying tones. Relatively unknown on this side of the channel, this is a rare chance to catch her work, not to mention that of these two talented brothers, who offer us a lovingly crafted comedy set in their home region of the luscious Pyrenees Mountains.