THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
His tricycle makes him a happy man. Helmet screwed on the ears, Igor, a deliveryman of vegetables of about forty years, goes in the wind, fills his lungs with a taste of freedom, does not think any more of anything, if not to keep the balance. The boy is disabled, cerebral palsy, says the medical jargon. He has difficulty coordinating his movements, his walk is sinuous, he speaks slowly and handles the fork and the knife poorly, preferring the tablespoon to them, all because of a strangulation at birth by the umbilical cord.
And badaboum! he falls off his tricycle. “I just sent a handicapped person into the ditch”, summarizes the culprit, Louis, a funeral director approaching his sixties, on the telephone, particularly embarrassed by the situation. Quickly recovered, Igor sees in him a kind of alter ego who carries around a burden like him: it’s not easy to be an undertaker, it throws a chill, doesn’t it? No doubt he already sees in it the magnified alliance of two weaknesses that they can turn to their advantage.
Let’s be honest, we feared the worst: a bluette advocating openness to difference at all costs, a product designed to be a hit in theaters, built on a barely believable canvas – an undertaker and a handicapped person cross Switzerland and France to deliver a coffin, in Montpellier.
In the production and in the casting, a marketing duo with the return of Bernard Campan, the ex-member of the Inconnus (comic trio of the 1990s which will reform soon) who has become one of the heroes of the series of sentimental films the heart of men, and for the first time on screen, Alexandre Jollien, handicapped and Swiss philosopher, like his character, author of ten books, always ready to praise the merits of wisdom, happiness and freedom on television sets.
A comedy tandem movie that doesn’t try to fool us when it comes to Aristotelian philosophy
Well ! We were wrong because the road trip in a funeral van goes straight to the heart. Perhaps because it is nourished by a story of friendship born eighteen years ago between Campan and Jollien, but above all because it takes the canonical form of a comedy tandem film which does not attempt not to fool us in terms of Aristotelian philosophy: man is the friend of man, love each other, beyond differences.
As such, Almost doesn’t waste his time listing the abysmal gaps that separate the two characters before bringing them together, nor does he overplay the rejection: Louis is just an ordinary guy, not very inclined to express his feelings, who doesn’t have so much want to get involved in a friendly relationship with several strangers: will Igor still be so clingy and isn’t he a bit simple?
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