Everything smiles on us: a comedy with chiseled writing (review)
Finally, a bittersweet comedy about the couple and the family that avoids hackneyed clichés! The big winner of the Festival de l’Alpe d’Huez 2020 is finally released in theaters.
Films about couples of parents in crisis, we have the impression that French cinema does just that. The difference here is that it’s successful! And even better, Everything smiles on us surprises us. With classic starting ingredients (dad, mom, three children, lovers and passing time), Mélissa Drigeard (Never the first night) manages to concoct a neo-vaudeville where the tragic points under the humor of the heartbreaks. All the characters find themselves behind closed doors in a settling of accounts that is as surreal as it is explosive. The director and her screenwriter Vincent Juillet thwart the traps of the genre to offer chiseled and hard-hitting dialogues to their interpreters. Elsa Zylberstein and Stéphane De Groodt complement each other perfectly and give their couple in crisis an astonishing authenticity. Including when they start winnowing their not-so-smart youngest son. At their side, we find two tragic figures who propel the film into a dimension as touching as it is deeply sincere. That of the dying patriarch, interpreted with few words and a lot of mastery by Guy Marchand and that of the single sister whose magnificent monologue Emilie Caen delivers with class. Be warned, we do not laugh in front of Everything smiles at us but you come out, moved, with the desire to love your family and to tell them. He did not steal his raid of awards at the Alpe d’Huez 2020 comedy film festival: Special Jury Prize and double interpretation prize for Elsa Zylberstein and Stéphane De Groodt.
By Melissa Drigeard. With Elsa Zylberstein, Stéphane De Groodt, Guy Marchand… Duration: 1h41. Released October 20, 2021
