Summary
Faced with a resurgent audiovisual industry that is strenuously reluctant to realize the existence of Covid-19 and worried about continuing to give a frozen image of the world in 2019, this French dramatic comedy that lifts this veil of denial is very welcome. He managed to review numerous topics of daily life during strict lockdown in the first stage of the pandemic, when not much was known about the transmission of the virus and vaccines were a very distant possibility. And it does so with remarkable rigor. Everything we see in this story will resonate and feel familiar.
Review
The film portrays the life of a group of neighbors in a typical Parisian building during strict lockdown in the first stage of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Currently, the resurgent audiovisual industry is reluctant to realize the existence of Covid-19, concerned about continuing to give a frozen image of the world in 2019. Not only are there no chinstraps, but the coronavirus is not even alluded to as a central element of everyday life even today.
In this context, this French dramatic comedy that lifts this veil of denial is welcome and manages to review numerous topics of daily life during strict confinement in the first stage of the pandemic, where not much was yet known about transmission of the virus and vaccines were still a very distant possibility. And it does so with remarkable rigor and detail. Everything we see in this story will resonate and feel familiar: how did its characters cope with strict quarantine? How did they position themselves against it and Covid-19? How did you operate in your family life, as a couple, and in your relationship with your neighbors?
The characters that make up this choral comedy are a scientific illustrator (Dany Boon, also director and co-writer), his wife, a lawyer (Laurence Arné, co-writer) and his little daughter; the husband of the janitor hospitalized with covid (Jorge Calvo); the owner of the building and his two children (Francois Damiens), a young married couple of a singer and a fitness teacher with claims of influencers (Alison Wheeler and Tom Leeb), a biochemist (Yvan Atal) who works in his laboratory to obtain a vaccine (giving rise to one of the best comic lines of the story and adjusted to scientific rigor -observing the blackboard in the laboratory); the owner of an obviously closed restaurant (Liliane Rovère, the veteran representative of Ten percent) and an enigmatic tenant.
I will leave it to the viewer to recognize (and recognize himself in) the topics, behaviors and postures of the characters; and it is not convenient to reveal them, since the achievement of this recognition is one of the strong points of the film (certain similarities with the realities lived outside of France will be surprising).
The narration draws on various registers of comedy: some witty and very funny, others with situations taken to a ridiculous perhaps too exaggerated (and very French), notes of physical comedy and moments when it becomes serious or sentimental. The performances are solvent and those corresponding to the illustrator's daughter and the owner's son (Rose de Kervenoaël and Milo Machado Graner) deserve a special mention.
Faced with a resurgent audiovisual industry that is strenuously reluctant to realize the existence of Covid-19 and worried about continuing to give a frozen image of the world in 2019, this French dramatic comedy that lifts this veil of denial is very welcome. He managed to review numerous topics of daily life during strict lockdown in the first stage of the pandemic, when not much was known about the transmission of the virus and vaccines were a very distant possibility. And it does so with remarkable rigor. Everything we see in this story will resonate and feel familiar.
Review
The film portrays the life of a group of neighbors in a typical Parisian building during strict lockdown in the first stage of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Currently, the resurgent audiovisual industry is reluctant to realize the existence of Covid-19, concerned about continuing to give a frozen image of the world in 2019. Not only are there no chinstraps, but the coronavirus is not even alluded to as a central element of everyday life even today.
In this context, this French dramatic comedy that lifts this veil of denial is welcome and manages to review numerous topics of daily life during strict confinement in the first stage of the pandemic, where not much was yet known about transmission of the virus and vaccines were still a very distant possibility. And it does so with remarkable rigor and detail. Everything we see in this story will resonate and feel familiar: how did its characters cope with strict quarantine? How did they position themselves against it and Covid-19? How did you operate in your family life, as a couple, and in your relationship with your neighbors?
The characters that make up this choral comedy are a scientific illustrator (Dany Boon, also director and co-writer), his wife, a lawyer (Laurence Arné, co-writer) and his little daughter; the husband of the janitor hospitalized with covid (Jorge Calvo); the owner of the building and his two children (Francois Damiens), a young married couple of a singer and a fitness teacher with claims of influencers (Alison Wheeler and Tom Leeb), a biochemist (Yvan Atal) who works in his laboratory to obtain a vaccine (giving rise to one of the best comic lines of the story and adjusted to scientific rigor -observing the blackboard in the laboratory); the owner of an obviously closed restaurant (Liliane Rovère, the veteran representative of Ten percent) and an enigmatic tenant.
I will leave it to the viewer to recognize (and recognize himself in) the topics, behaviors and postures of the characters; and it is not convenient to reveal them, since the achievement of this recognition is one of the strong points of the film (certain similarities with the realities lived outside of France will be surprising).
The narration draws on various registers of comedy: some witty and very funny, others with situations taken to a ridiculous perhaps too exaggerated (and very French), notes of physical comedy and moments when it becomes serious or sentimental. The performances are solvent and those corresponding to the illustrator's daughter and the owner's son (Rose de Kervenoaël and Milo Machado Graner) deserve a special mention.