The Best Is Yet to Come: A Deadly Comedy! (Review)
The directors of Le Prénom have produced an unbridled comedy, less satirical than melancholic, if not funereal, carried by the shock duo Luchini-Bruel.
The tandem Matthieu Delaporte-Alexandre De La Patellière (“Delap Delap”) has not stopped since the success of the First namein 2012. They are triumphing these days thanks to their adaptation of the Count of Monte Cristo with Pierre Niney. In the meantime, the two authors were called to the bedside of Dad or Mom (of which they strengthened the initial scenario, wrote the sequel and showrun the series), written by four hands A famous unknown (directed solo by Matthieu) and signed two plays (A farewell dinner, All that you want).
Busy and workaholic, always juggling between projects, they decided, in 2019 and for their second joint production, highly anticipated, to confront a universal subject that has affected them closely: death. First there was the cruel one of Valérie Benguigui, who passed away in September 2013, a few months after receiving her César for best supporting actress for First name. Then there was the virtual one of Matthieu, who thought he had an irreversible tumor for a few weeks before coming out of it unscathed. For five years, the two thieves circled around this subject, which was all the more dangerous because they didn’t want to make it a drama but an ode to life, a slightly dark comedy in which we would glimpse the light. They found this light in the ordeal that Matthieu went through, of which Alexandre was the only one informed. And what if the disease revealed a friendship that we thought was indestructible? Yes, but how? This is where the comic mechanics that the duo is fond of come into play.
So much for putting the matter into context. Best is yet to cometo be seen again this Saturday evening on M6, and which Première highly recommends.
The Best is Yet to Come – Patrick Bruel: “It was difficult for Fabrice Luchini to get involved in this film”
CONTRASTS
It all begins with a misunderstanding, that never-ending artifice of the boulevard. Arthur (Luchini), a methodical and rigid doctor, goes to collect the tests of his best friend, the flamboyant César (Bruel), to whom he lent his social security card after a bad fall that required a short hospitalization. The surgeon then tells him that these tests incidentally revealed the presence of an incurable tumor. In real life, Arthur would tell César what was going on. But this is fiction. Arthur stammers and, in front of his friend’s joy of life, involuntarily makes him believe that he is the one who is sick! No laughing matter? Of course it is. We have known since War is declared And Untouchables that serious subjects can lead to thrilling comedies whose apparent lightness makes the fragility of our existences even more salient. As in the aforementioned films, a character decides to change this damned destiny by re-enchanting the life of the other. The brilliant idea of the film is to entrust the responsibility to the dead man on probation, the sunny and energetic Caesar, determined to share magical moments with the one he believes to be condemned, this apathetic Arthur locked in his neuroses. The shift in stakes favors the burlesque but also the inevitable backlash.
SLIDE
In its first third, The best is yet to come is filmed like a comedy by Francis Veber, the king of the pitch to whom the directors owe a lot. Editing and dialogues on the spot, a sense of burlesque, complicity with the viewer culminate in a crisp face-to-face between Arthur and a cancer patient in remission (the formidable Zineb Triki), a meeting organized by César to allow his friend to speak out and find comfort. Arthur will take advantage of it to tell the truth, a truth that no one can hear. And the comedy gradually turns into a hushed drama as the fatal deadline looms. From Veber, we move on to (Yves) Robert and Sautet; from a series of misunderstandings to the bittersweet description of the bonds of friendship and love that are weakened by the implacable return of reality, to the detriment of the fiction that the characters told themselves. Guaranteed emotion.
The influences of The Count of Monte Cristo
