Review by Beatrice On 23-Jun-2023
Darby Crash would perhaps have enjoyed a quarter of an hour or more of real celebrity. And, instead, the Germs singer a microcult was alive and a microcult remained dead. In fact, Crash decided to kill himself-overdose, of course-the day before Lennon's murder: never more wrong timing because, of course, the headlines and TV news were all about the former Beatle. Little or nothing for this degenerate Californian, mind and body of a group that is rightly considered the American version of the Sex Pistols: same nihilistic vocation, same screw-ups on and off stage, same predictable end of the band's most deranged.
Such is life... Adrien begins by telling this anecdote!
His girlfriend puts him on stand-by by talking about "pause," and when he asks her what that means, she replies that pause allows you to resume while stop does not.
In short, she is softly breaking up with him but he does not give up and after the three phases consisting of depression, anger and despair, which turns into smug commiseration, after 38 days he sends her a message at exactly 5:24 p.m. and at 6:56 p.m. he still has not received a reply and Adrien has to stay for dinner with his parents, sister and future brother-in-law.
Between flashbacks of childhood and adolescent memories, the tall, skinny and rather awkward protagonist collects memories including his first date with Sonia, the girlfriend of the break.
A circular stream of consciousness, through the eyes of one who is bothered by everything because everything seems pointless, stupid, repetitive and redundant when waiting for an answer, a hint of life, a sign of recognition from the break.
And so he critically scrutinizes his father's usual tales at the dinner table, his mother's usual reactions, his sister's emotional mishaps, and finds himself having to cash in on his brother-in-law's invitation, that of making a speech on their wedding day, to him, shy, insecure and utterly removed from any narcissistic weakness.
In his emotional flow he thinks about the melancholy of weddings, the unbearableness of toy trains; about all the family unspokenness, perpetrated out of meekness or pity, the fulfillment of unmentionable desires to avoid the wedding speech..
All the way to torment over Sonia's encounter with one Romain, allegedly responsible for her fiancée's estrangement.
Tirard orchestrates a tragi-comic comedy, unleashing on the hypocrisy of families, on the inconsistency of loves, made of dependence and loneliness, on illusion, short-circuits, stereotypes and sclerotized habits of unreflected and biological life.
The metaphor of molasses and trophallaxis speaks volumes about the ingredients and the dish this film churns out with sophisticated skill.
Eighty-seven minutes of critical reflection, macabre fun, refined and subtle sarcasm on the themes of family, society, love and one's place in the world.
Self-recognition inevitably passes through it all, and sometimes the obstacle course proves tractable, sometimes it climbs Sisyphean paths.
The film, inexplicably lost in the labyrinthine meshes of distribution, is finally released in Italian theaters on Feb. 10, 2022 after being screened at Cannes 2020.
Based on the introspective novel of the same name by renowned French cartoonist Fabrice Caro, it becomes in Tirard's hands a brilliant comedy with a chaotically successful screenplay about neuroses, obsessions, paranoia, loneliness, but above all about the inexhaustible theme of human incommunicability.
A democritical smiling at the absurdity of the world, a sensual, cynical plunging into the sea of living, into the wave-like indifference of reality
23-Jun-2023 by Beatrice