Every day, AlloCiné recommends a film to (re)watch on TV. This evening: a comedy full of humor and tenderness.
Gabrielle, Elsa and Mao are brother and sisters, but do not mix. Especially not. The first is a “statue” for tourists, much to the chagrin of her teenage son. Elsa is angry with the whole world and desperate to get pregnant. And Mao, a chronically depressed genius game designer, drowns his melancholy in alcohol and psychoanalysis.
As for their parents, Pierre and Claudine, separated for a long time, they never did anything to strengthen the bonds of the family. However, at the time of the grandfather’s funeral, they will have to meet, and answer, together, the annoying question: “What to do with Grandma?”.
This is the pitch of Photo De Famille, Cecilia Rouaud’s second feature film. Drawing inspiration from the films of Pierre Salvadori, Noah Baumbach and Sam Mendes, and more generally from independent American cinema capable of filming the in-between – discomfort and laughter, joy and sorrow -, the director tackles a serious subject through the prism of comedy. She thus signs a family chronicle that is at once funny, tender and moving, served by an impeccable cast.
The filmmaker finds in particular Vanessa Paradis, whom she had already directed in I made myself very small, but also directs Camille Cottin, Pierre Deladonchamps or even Chantal Lauby and Jean-Pierre Bacri as an ex-husband. This is also the actor’s last role in the cinema, who died of cancer in 2021, at the age of 69.
In an exclusive interview with AlloCiné, Pierre Deladonchamps returned to his collaboration with this actor he adored: “I especially remember a scene that we had together on Photo de Famille where we played a father and a son.
There had been the shot on him and then the reverse shot on me, and even in the reverse shot, he was giving everything he had. During this scene where he was not filmed at all, he really started crying because we had improvised the end of the scene a little and I had told him things that had touched him in the relationship of the characters.
I found it very touching that he was crying. It was him. That’s how I would sum up Jean-Pierre Bacri, that’s what I knew of him: someone very intelligent, touching and generous.“
Family photo by Cecilia Rouaud with Vanessa Paradis, Camille Cottin, Pierre Deladonchamps…
Tonight on Chérie 25 at 9:05 p.m.