A good movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was starring Romain Duris, I thought I might as well check it out. As usual, when I started to watch this movie, I knew pretty much nothing about it and, at first, it seemed to be some kind of French version of a typical Ken Loach political pamphlet. However, seemingly out of the blue, the wife of the main character was gone and it became something completely different though. Indeed, from this point on, it became some kind of French blue-collar version of ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’. The big difference between the two movies, except the social background of the background, was that, in this French movie, it was never clear what was going on with this woman after all. As a result, you might expect this movie to become a mystery thriller focusing on her disappearance and her possible return but it was definitely not something that interested the makers which might have been frustrating for some viewers. In fact, I’m going myself right now through a very ugly divorce so my first reaction was to conclude that their relationship was over and this family was broken for good but they went for a completely different approach which turned out to be quite intriguing. Indeed, instead, they focused on how traumatic this whole experience was for this man who eventually never managed to come into terms with what happened to him and his family. Basically, it is understandable and expected that his two young children would constantly yearn for her return but their father actually shared some similar feelings which was surprising but super interesting as well. Indeed, as a result, the guy was going through a rollercoaster of emotions and Romain Duris, probably one of the best French actors at work nowadays, was definitely up to the task. Eventually, you don’t get any answer about how it’s going to work out in the future but that didn’t bother me. Still, it was rather  difficult (actually pretty much impossible for me) to root for this missing woman, to understand her predicament, since you spend so little time with her at the beginning. Another issue was that the whole Ken Loach political pamphlet thingy kept popping up every 5 mins which did get the characters a realistic social background but, to be honest, it didn’t mix very well with this domestic drama and, as a result, it felt as if this movie wanted to be 2 really different things at the same time. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was a decent watch though and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.