To put it succinctly Danielle Thompson has done it again. Since her first, in 1999, she has now written and directed five movies and all but one have featured an ensemble cast and all five have been excellent. Clearly she is well within her comfort zone with large casts but I for one would be interested in seeing her tackle a chamber-piece, maybe something like Un Coeur en hiver with a few more laffs than Sautet felt necessary (and just for the record Un Coeur en hiver doesn't need any laffs as Sautet made it, all I'm suggesting is a similar subject but more of a rom-com). Meanwhile she has delivered a very easy-to-take tale of two Jewish brothers with diametrically opposed lifestyles, one, Kad Merad, a self-made millionaire and, to all intents and purposes, a gentile, and one, Eric Elmosino, a classical musician who could hardly be more orthodox without becoming a rabbi. When they meet, infrequently, they begin by embracing and within minutes are venting years of frustration. Thompson is adept at brilliant set-pieces; we meet them first at the wedding of Merad's daughter BUT Elmosino's wife has just died in a road accident in New York and he has flown her body to Merad's house in Paris; thus we have a grieving Elmosino sitting Shiva whilst in the next room Merad is entertaining his guests by singing Sinatra songs (badly). More complications ensue when Elmosino's daughter, travelling to the reception by Eurostar, is drawn to a man sitting opposite her who turns out, natch, to be her cousin's groom to be. Icing on the cake, if any were needed, comes in the shape of the brothers' ninety year old father, Ivry Gitlis, who, in his day job is a world-class violinist, yet here displays a gift for comic timing. In short another burst from the Thompson machine gun.
Review of It Happened in Saint-Tropez
