Bis Repetita at Alpe d’Huez: a great comedy between PROFS and Les Beaux Gosses (review)

Émilie Noblet’s first film notably brings together Louise Bourgoin and Xavier Lacaille. A success.

The festival has barely started and already, a gem. Repeat is the first film in the competition and the kind of comedy we would like to see more often in theaters. Funny, moving, intelligent, supremely embodied. It is flawless which owes as much to its performers as to its script, its direction and a little to… Amélie Oudéa-Castera.

We know this well: when it comes to cinema, the timing of releases is partly guided by chance. But we must still salute the exceptional sense of the agenda of this presentation at Alpe d’Huez: while the Minister of National Education gets stuck in her lies and pushes the contempt towards teachers quite far , Émilie Noblet arrives with her film which mixes and reflects (implicitly but in an intelligent and precise manner) on the virtues of teaching, educational separatism, elitism and above all the discomfort of teachers. Hello ! We hear you grumbling from your living room: and the comedy in all this? It is the primary virtue of Repeat : on a very serious subject that the film will never try to dodge, it manages to be at the same time a true romantic comedy, a teen movie (the five kids are EXCEPTIONAL), a portrait of a woman adrift and a pure teacher comedy. Noblet’s feat? Manage to balance all these registers.

And now, on the board.

The comic turbo Xavier Lacaille

Delphine (Louise Bourgoin, as radiant as she is phenomenal) is a Latin teacher in a high school in Angers. She has five students who she takes care of for a few hours a week. High school students and teachers agree: Latin is no longer of much use, so we might as well agree on the result. In exchange for royal peace (and the possibility of doing your shopping online in your class), the teacher automatically gives them an average of 19. And in the end, who is to blame her? Everything would be fine if, by chance, his class was not selected in an excellence competition in Naples. The five wankers and their resigned teacher will therefore have to represent France in this competition. They are accompanied on their journey by Rodolphe, the headmaster’s nephew (Xavier Lacaille, unstoppable turbo comic), who turns out to be a slightly annoying rogue, obsessed with his Latin thesis.

Arriving in the Neapolitan palace where the teams of budding Latinists observe and challenge each other (Goblet of Fire Harry Potter atmosphere), Delphine will have to: 1/ manage the bumbling and flirtatious academic who is organizing this competition, 2/ contain the simple enthusiasm of Rodolphe, and 3/ do everything possible so that his class ultimately wins the competition. Everything, including cheating…

Celine Dion in Latin

Repeat therefore achieves the feat of being constantly funny and touching. The gags are written (AND played) to perfection, the characters all avoid caricature (except those who are pure comic springs like the Italian academic) and, best of all, Noblet always tries to make cinema. Very well written, his production knows how to play off the slightest accidents and seems to feed off the improvisations of his overheated actors. Having left for Naples, she allows herself a few Antonioniesque lurches with a Louise Bourgoin whose beauty is reminiscent of that of Vitti. You read correctly and if you are wondering, know that, yes! we have just seen a film which succeeds in the unnatural hybridization between PROFES, THE Red Desert And The Beautiful Kids.

As we said, one of the keys to satisfaction lies in the balance of the distribution where, without falling into clichés, each member of the acne-prone herd holds their place perfectly. The spleenatic teenager, the gifted but wanking high school student, the withdrawn one, the fashionista and the marlou are dazzling. Sense of timing, valve and collective play, these five actors are incandescent. But we shouldn’t forget the adults. Xavier Lacaille refines his dizzying slapstick and establishes himself as the little brother of Etaix and Amalric – with a more modern sense of valve. Louise Bourgoin is fantastic in a role where she must constantly blow hot and cold, the existential drift and the authoritarian takeover and, Noémie Lvovsky only has a supporting role but she imposes her “disruptive” talent particularly in a thunderous dinner scene (with a failed risotto).

We were going to forget the craziest part: there is also talk of a cover of Céline Dion in Latin… In short, you understand: we risk talking to you again very quickly about this fantastic film.

Bis Repetita by Émilie Noblet will be released in cinemas on March 20.