TFX – TUESDAY, DECEMBER 27 AT 11:05 PM – FILM
Etienne Chatiliez wanted to call his second film A huge disappointment. Conjuring joke that reveals all the anguish of the young champion at the moment of the recurrence. Life is a long calm riverthe first feature film by a 35-year-old ad whiz, had been more than a commercial success, a social phenomenon: the Le Quesnoys and the Groseilles elevated to the rank of archetypes… Could Chatiliez do as well, could he do better?
Stripping, disturbing, even more pernicious than the Long River, Auntie Danielle it’s Jules Renard revisited by Bretécher, it’s pitiless and compassionate, tragic and hilarious.
Aunt Danielle (Tsilla Chelton) is old, a widow, a cow. Inflexible whiner, she is a virtuoso of gratuitous villainy. She crushes the flowers, bullies the children, abandons the dogs, steals herself to accuse others, goes almost to murder, and almost to suicide for the pleasure of revenge. Tatie Danielle is a hyena in slippers, the wolf disguised as a grandmother. She is the least respectable part of ourselves, she frees us from our intimate horrors, she shows us – what a relief – that the good guys are idiots…
A wonderful discomfort
A salubrious demonstration which covers with a modest cloak of (strangled) laughter the obese bad conscience of our society, the discouraging mediocrity of the petty bourgeoisie, and, when it comes to old age, the atrocious reality. Auntie Danielle isn’t mean because she’s desperate, she’s mean and desperate. She will also find her master in the person of an energetic and solitary au pair (Isabelle Nanty). The survival of the species depends on ferocity.
To put this moral fable into images, Etienne Chatiliez chose fluidity, proximity. His camera has become more flexible, less astonished. If there is still a certain arrhythmia to be corrected, if the omnipresence of Aunt Danielle is sometimes suffocating, the film, teeming with hard-hitting narrative ellipses and replies of a lightning daily, nevertheless provides a magnificent uneasiness.
It has a terrific cast. Eric Prat, the nephew, irresistible block of sneaky cowardice. Catherine Jacob, his wife, luscious and disarmed, adorable. Auntie’s tamer, Isabelle Nanty, with her starving childish look.
And, of course, Tsilla Chelton. Creator of eleven Ionesco pieces, she grabs Aunt head-on with furious energy and cheerfulness. And a lot of courage. Because you need it to get ugly, to grow old, to play decrepitude so happily. Tsilla Chelton goes all the way, imperial, until the end where we see her happy (?), having chosen freedom. A freedom that he will have to pay for.
Auntie Danielle, by Etienne Chatiliez. With Tsilla Chelton, Catherine Jacob, Isabelle Nanty, Karine Viard (Fr., 1990, 110 min).