Every day, AlloCiné recommends a film to (re)watch on TV. Tonight: a delicious historical comedy led by Jean Dujardin and Mélanie Laurent.
Elisabeth is straight, serious and honest. Captain Neuville is cowardly, deceitful and unscrupulous. She hates him. He despises her. But by making him an operetta hero, she has become, despite herself, responsible for an imposture which will very quickly overtake her…
An irresistible historical vaudeville
This pitch is that of the excellent historical comedy The Return of the Hero, played with obvious pleasure by Jean Dujardin and Mélanie Laurent, who cavort like never before for the greatest pleasure of the spectator. Released in theaters in 2018, Laurent Tirard’s feature film is a spirited, inventive vaudeville, full of tasty dialogue, above which hover the shadows of La Folie des grandeurs or Ridicule. In a word ? Irresistible !
One of the reasons which pushed Laurent Tirard to achieve this Return of the hero full of charm lies in the fact that costume adventure films are becoming increasingly rare in the French cinematographic landscape. “Costume films, and especially adventure comedies, like those of Rappeneau or Brocahave brought joy to entire generations of spectators, and have contributed to my desire to make cinema”he declares. “I don’t understand why they disappeared from the screens.”
When Jane Austen meets French adventure comedy…
Aside from this passion for this genre, there were two universes that particularly appealed to Laurent Tirard and that he wanted to see flourish in The Return of the Hero : that of Jane Austen, with her elegance, her refinement and her characters locked in the shackles of the codes of their society, but also that of French adventure comedies, with their energy, their twirling side and their pronounced taste for the characters of scoundrels. “I told myself that mixing the two would create a fairly explosive culture shock”specifies the filmmaker.
Laurent Tirard was right ! Because The Return of the Hero is a truly explosive cocktail, which provides great spectator pleasure. We bet you will fall under the spell of this sparkling and damn entertaining comedy?
Tonight on France 3 at 9:10 p.m.
Jean Dujardin – Mélanie Laurent: the true or false interview