(Re)discover on Amazon Prime Video the virtuoso and spicy “Un air de famille”, directed by Cédric Klapisch and co-written by the excellent Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnès Jaoui.
Every Friday evening, around 6 p.m., it’s the same song: the members of the Ménard family meet at “Père Tranquille”, the small café run by Henri, and once they have had an aperitif at the counter, they leave. together for dinner at the restaurant, right next door. This evening, however, the routine is disrupted by an unexpected event: Arlette, Henri’s wife, announces to her husband that she will not come, and that she needs time “to think”.
Overwhelmed by the situation, the boss of Father Tranquille must still welcome his mother, as irascible as usual, his brother Philippe, very tense by his televised intervention in the afternoon, his sister-in-law Yolande, who is celebrating his birthday, and his sister Betty, less attached than ever to respecting social conventions. All under the eyes of Dennis, his employee, tenant and often painkiller.
Four years after the excellent adaptation of their first play Kitchen and Dependencies (which we also recommend without reservation), Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri are back at it again. After having depicted with their sharp pen the hypocrisies and ego quarrels of a dinner between friends, they attack the family meal with even more acidity.
Served by the brilliant direction of Cédric Klapisch and by a cast of exceptional actors (of which they themselves are part), the virtuoso dialogues of the Jaoui-Bacri duo hit the mark every time. Funny, accurate, profound, with surgical precision, the lines in the film can often give you the unsettling impression of having been borrowed from your own family receptions.
BAC Films
(Re)discover the 10 best punchlines of the late Jean-Pierre Bacri.)
It is indeed difficult to find a feature film that lives up to its name better than this “family resemblance”. With an inexhaustible richness that one perhaps does not fully suspect from the first viewing, Jaoui and Bacri’s film deserves to be rediscovered, as many times as necessary. Firstly because it is almost impossible to get tired of it, then because we always discover new nuggets, new innuendoes, new character intentions (even at the 15th time!).
Released in theaters in 1996, A Family Resemblance has brought together the general public (2.4 million admissions) and the profession. Nominated in 7 César categories, the film won 3 statuettes: one for the screenplay by Jaoui and Bacri, one for the performance of Jean-Pierre Daroussin, and one for that of Catherine Frot, indeed remarkable and extremely endearing.
(Re)discover our interview with Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnès Jaoui for their latest film, “Place Publique”…