Jacques and Martine have invited a friend they have not seen for ten years and which became famous. Among the guests, there was George, the boyfriend hosted, Fred, the brother of Martine and his girlfriend Marilyn, and of course the Guest and his wife Charlotte. On the pretext of traffic jams, the latter two come with a two-hour delay…
Author’s Note
[rating:8/10]
• Release Date : 07 April 1993
• Directed by Philippe Muyl
• Film French
• With Zabou Breitman, Sam Karmann, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Agnès Jaoui, Jean-Pierre Bacri
• Duration : 1h36min
• Best moments of the film :
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The duo Bacri–Jaoui is known and recognized for years for their films dealing with the details of the life of each, mean day-to-day the marks of love, passing by the vexations, frustrations, hopes and disillusions of man in the world.
Kitchen and dependencies is the first film adapted from one of their plays, what Cédric Klapisch re-iterate with An Air of Family by the following.
If the bottom of the topic remains similar to their other creations, the form of this adaptation has the originality to describe the behaviors and psychologies of five characters through their dialogues in a kitchen, talking, quarrelling, épiloguant on what’s happening away from our eyes, in the living room.
Martine and Jacques are a couple classic : solid love, routine, beautiful children and the everyday worries of conventional design. They host temporarily to George, a friend of Jacques, whose recent relationship break-up forced him to find himself without a roof. Martine and Jacques are not in their normal state this evening : they receive at home an old childhood friend, lost sight of, and met by chance a few days ago, which has become a great celebrity of the small screen.
This status, popular not enthusiastic and Georges, they are not inclined to follow patterns and be wary of the dangers of social success, and the fact that this former friend has since married Charlotte, a former lover of George, not the quiet little. Moreover, the dinner with Fred, the brother of Martine, whose love for gambling has destroyed the bank account but not to the extent the fever of poker.
We shall see this evening that the snippets that the characters would be willing to offer us the chance of their detours by the kitchen. George rattle, Martine is excited, Fred remains incorrigible, Charlotte hides his feelings and Jacques wants that everything is going well for everyone.
The celebrity in question, we will never see on the screen. Not more than Marilyn, the wife of Fred, which we can only imagine the dream body that, through the flattering words of the men talking between them in the kitchen. And of course, nothing in the evening don’t go as planned…
Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnès Jaoui are lovers of the human nature. Only people deeply passionate and careful observers of their congeners in its beautiful qualities, such as his unbearable flaws can write dialog so fair.
If the demo suffers from a certain manichaeism in the general point of view on celebrity and the worship of money, the exceptional quality of the writing lies in the fact that the characters, themselves, are just no “good” or ” bad guys “. They all have a reason, a motivation, an injury that asks the viewer to both severity and indulgence on their attitudes.
This is the real and perilous difficulty overcome systematically the duo of authors.
Point of view of staging, his sobriety flirts too often with the border cinema/theatre piece filmed, but allows for moments to slip in some nice original ideas. The actors are all perfect, and if Zabou you seems unbearable at times ask you one thing : that annoys you does it because she plays evil, or rather because it reminds you of some of your friends who have the same defects ? Bacri, in the role that he knows of grumpy inveterate portrays a character more subtle than it seems, Darroussin, Karmann and Jaoui are all convincing. Note a scene jubilant during which Jean-Pierre Bacri is struggling on the phone with a hotel receptionist, a funny and quality game exceptional. An essential film for lovers study of mores subtle, describing between cynicism and compassion of the human soul contemporary.