For what it's worth, I feel my most American when watching French comedies. Don't get me wrong, French dramas or (complicated) love stories, even the rare sci-fi film, these are often captivating, but here is another comedy that left me cold.
It does start out in promising fashion, after a neglected child gets pushed this way and that way on what is proper behavior, a marabou stork makes a haughty and peculiar entrance. For a while, this film felt like it might fire up a "Holy Motors" surreal style, but instead it settle for a "how strange and ridiculous are the rich."
There is a tale of "don't judge a lover by its cover" for the young heir, and his old besotted father offers us a version of "you can't buy happiness." Both father and son seem to seek the answers to life at the bottom of the bottle, endless bottles of wine. Oh and they reject their upper crust status.
There is some "it's a small world" charm as certain stories intersect, and to a degree they are tied together by the ending (where disabused ol' drunken dad, and a good-hearted discarded maid, and strong man in the wrong job all wind up happy and free away from the city).
Otar Iosseliani, a Georgian in France both directs and portrays that father. Some of the scenes with wine and song were highlights, in the harmony presented (both musical and human). And the matriarch offers us a very literal "helicopter parent."
Overall though the gentle lampooning and bumbling characters, it reminds me of how the French apparently revere clowns, and I don't.
It does start out in promising fashion, after a neglected child gets pushed this way and that way on what is proper behavior, a marabou stork makes a haughty and peculiar entrance. For a while, this film felt like it might fire up a "Holy Motors" surreal style, but instead it settle for a "how strange and ridiculous are the rich."
There is a tale of "don't judge a lover by its cover" for the young heir, and his old besotted father offers us a version of "you can't buy happiness." Both father and son seem to seek the answers to life at the bottom of the bottle, endless bottles of wine. Oh and they reject their upper crust status.
There is some "it's a small world" charm as certain stories intersect, and to a degree they are tied together by the ending (where disabused ol' drunken dad, and a good-hearted discarded maid, and strong man in the wrong job all wind up happy and free away from the city).
Otar Iosseliani, a Georgian in France both directs and portrays that father. Some of the scenes with wine and song were highlights, in the harmony presented (both musical and human). And the matriarch offers us a very literal "helicopter parent."
Overall though the gentle lampooning and bumbling characters, it reminds me of how the French apparently revere clowns, and I don't.