[CRITICAL] STILL HAPPY

STILL HAPPY is a comedy-drama in the French as we love and as we do not see so often ! Well written, very well played and the range of emotional broad, YET HAPPY is a winning combination that makes the very best among the other films of the genre at this time (The great sharing, Stop your Cinema). Benoît Graffin avoids intelligently the situations, shots, gags and other unique portraiture. He prefers to keep a careful balance of subject depth and light treatments. It must be said that he is not at his first try since it displays many successes as a screenwriter (After you, Outside of price , The daughter of Monaco, When I would be small) and sign with STILL HAPPY, his third feature film as a director. This attack, as well as the brilliant couple, family, and… at the galley financial !

Mary and Sam are in love, but Sam is unemployed for 2 years. Former executive, it fails to pop its head out of the water and tries everything and anything to save a handful of euros, and regain the esteem of his wife. Their eldest daughter did not intend to let this situation last longer and gets in the way. Their daily lives, already atypical, then turns into a fiasco totally crazy !

To portray this couple in a bad state that lingers, Benoît Graffin has met Sandrine Kiberlain and Edward Baer. Excellent choice ! The duo of actors works beautifully. They show a complicity crazy and their tandem very happy gives the film a joyful light, a tone of playful, and grain intensity, which makes it a film well qualified. Édouard Baer is particularly moving in bear extravagant in the mouth of a ” beaten dog “, as he defines himself ; “ I can not this is my mouth ” lance-t-il ! It makes you smile of course but it manages mostly we touch. The actor knows how to bring his character of a man exhausted but optimistic spark of madness natural and verve sometimes exalted, sometimes broken. So, he spends the enthusiasm of the most total in the scenes where he thinks to be out of business, to the weariness of moving at the time the spell finally seems to persist.

In front of him, Benjamin Biolay (too rare in cinema) we conquered a rich business man lonely and in love. His mysterious charisma, his warm voice and his nonchalance natural opposed to the awkwardness charming character ofEdouard Baer, and makes for a perfect rival. Thanks to the two of them, STILL HAPPILY boasts a duo of male charm.

“Sandrine Kiberlain offers all its superb in the movie !”

But the most beautiful performance in the film – and it must be said, that clears somewhat those of others, comes back to Sandrine Kiberlain. It is she who is undoubtedly gives his entire superb in the movie ! The actress proves once again the breadth of his talent, moving with a natural ease disconcerting in the light register to the emotions more contained and intimate. Thus, if during the vast majority of the film it shows carelessness and spontaneity, it reveals a fragile, vulnerable, and in the final sequence.

Mary, her character, ensures the stewardship and the mood of the home for years with an optimism that commands respect. As said the concierge of the building, ” she never complains “, she smiles the same ! The casualness in which to believe Mary is nothing more than the expression of an inner strength formidable. As in STILL HAPPY, the woman is lioness, and makes every effort to stand in front of the spell and ensure her children the normality of their family life.

Through STILL HAPPY, Benoît Graffin thus makes the woman the stronger sex. The one who stands up, fights, orchestra of the daily life and sets the tone. While in the film the men are either depressed and in hibernation, or in the opulence (and therefore in a kind of stagnation comfortable), it is the female figure (mother or daughter) who is the only one active and that fact, alone, evidence of fighting spirit. For the developer, the courage is a story of women !

Finally, although we are indeed in the registry tragi-comic, HAPPY AGAIN reflects the difficult social context of a quarantine in unemployment. However, he adopts a posture very discreet on the possible interpretations too politicized of his film, suffice to distill the findings to homeopathic doses within the limits of the backdrop of the story.

STILL HAPPY then puts the bar high in the landscape of comedies coming up for the year 2016. And Benoit Graffin book about a film definitely fresh, which is pushing to see the glass half full, and who stands on the side of the light and those who believe in tomorrow. It’s good for you !

Sarah Benzazon

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