HUNTING AND GATHERING |
When Camille moves in with the Parisian odd-couple, a grumpy chef and a would-be actor, life gets more complicated for everyone. | score 3+ |
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Cast Audrey Tautou, Guillaume Canet, Laurent Stocker, François Bertin Director Claude Berri Screenwriter Claude Berri Country France (subtitles) Rating / Running Time M / 97 minutes Australian Release December 2007 Official Site (c) moviereview
2006-2007
ABN 72 775 390 361 |
While
some, much closer to the beating heart of French society, have written this off
as neo-conservative proselytising (imagine a world in which hardworking white
people live a happy life), Claude Berri’s latest box-office delight speaks to a
much wider audience than his critics would admit. In many ways, this urban romantic-drama
charts similar emotional landscape to his seminal Jean de Florette as it probes the price of apathy and cruelty. Camille
(Audrey Tautou) lives in a sprawling, Parisian apartment building. Making
herself ill to pay the rent, she falls on the kindness of her neighbour, a fey,
stuttering son of nobility who shares with an obnoxious, ill-tempered chef
(Guillaume Canet). Franck takes an instant dislike to the invader amid concerns
about his aged grandmother whom he’s recently put in a home. From here, the
signposts are clearly laid out and indicate a recognisable conclusion. As the
group forms a new family, we learn that Camille’s acid-tongued mother is irreparably
disappointed in her daughter, and that Franck’s relationship with his own
parents is non-existent. Not subplots, more background sketches that give the
foreground greater dimension. Yet
to say that this turns Berri’s film into some conspiratorial pamphlet for a conservative
wonderland, simply because he asks us to believe pleasant things can happen in
the real world, says much more about his detractors than it does Berri himself.
Truth is, Hunting And Gathering (originally
and better titled Together, It’s
Everything) is a small, sweet drama in which lonely people find a way to
get a bit more out of life. Inspiring really. It may not shake your world, but
it will certainly add something to it. // COLIN FRASER |