2015, France, directed by Richard Berry
Another film seen on a plane, which I was drawn into on the basis of the cast: Auteuil! Berry! Lhermitte! The middle man also directs what is supposed to be, I think, a farce along the lines of Francis Veber's chamber pieces like Le Dîner des cons. Based on a play, the underlying premise is distasteful in the extreme: Lhermitte kills his wife and the trio discuss, in extended comic riffs, how to deal with this situation and what it says about their friendship. Of course, French cinema has a pretty long history of men behaving badly, in particular with respect to women (much of Bertrand Blier's oeuvre, for instance), but there's something acutely offensive at play here and all the zip in the world can't fix it. Berry has very little to offer, either, as director and some of the material is the worst kind of filler (Berry dancing to a rap song). Auteuil has one strong scene, an extended, increasingly frantic monologue, but that's about it. Berry also undercuts the performances by cutting back and forth between the actors rather than allowing them to react in the same frame (I had the same objection to a much older piece of filmed theatre, Fric-Frac, with Michel Simon, Arletty, and Fernandel).
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