Like the characters in her film, filmmaker Manon Briand has reinvented a recipe to produce a deliciously authentic variation. In this way, she breathes into the classic structure of the coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of romantic comedy a typically Quebecois, unpretentious flavor and a current social subtext. Her protagonists must follow a recipe in the literal sense: that of a legendary dish by Paul Bocuse.
In fact, in Cornburg, a fictional town in the Eastern Townships near the American border, Sonia (Julie Le Breton), a customs officer, confiscates fine products from a French chef living in New York, who was trying to ship them to Montreal without declaring them.
Meanwhile, Sonia’s daughter Lili-Beth is being bullied at school because of her mother’s job – her strict enforcement of customs tariffs among the villagers has given her a bad reputation. To remedy the situation, Sonia, who once again runs into the cook, Victor, asks him to help her daughter win a children’s cooking competition.
This competition seems to her to be her last hope of saving her family’s honor. And Sonia, who knows nothing about gastronomy, summons Victor to help the little girl master a Paul Bocuse recipe to win the top honors, as if the Lyon chef were the only reference to follow in this matter.
Current issues
Let us clarify that Everyone is crazy! is not a romantic comedy, although romantic tension develops between Victor and Sonia without it ever being explicitly stated. Manon Briand explained in an interview that she had to convince her producers not to focus the story on the romance between the protagonists, in order to give more agency to her female character.
The filmmaker made the right choice to focus, therefore, on the quest of Sonia and her daughter, which becomes a pretext to address current issues in terms of food. Victor, for example, quickly understands that to help Lili-Beth win the competition, he must teach her to promote regional products and to construct an interesting “narrative” on the origin of the food she uses.
The protagonists therefore set off to meet the Estrie producers in order to produce a local version of their Bocuse-inspired dish. They form a charming mosaic of characters that give rise to comical situations where the urban ways of the French cook clash with the rustic traditions of the inhabitants. The gags are candid, sometimes predictable, but effective.
Uneven staging
Manon Briand finds the right balance between representing social issues and establishing an endearing universe in a succession of comic scenes. The last 30 minutes, however, suffer from some lengths, and above all, from overly written dialogues, while in the first scenes, we find ourselves believing in the characters (and loving them), despite the completely improbable situations in which they find themselves.
The staging is also uneven, including questionable transitions using drone footage and a strange continuity error where we are shown a winter view of Montreal between two scenes where there are still leaves on the trees…
But that doesn’t stop us from falling under the spell of Everyone is crazy!whose imperfections and good-natured tone are completely assumed. The performances of Julie Le Breton, as well as comedians Dominique Paquet and Oussama Fares in sympathetic supporting roles, aptly support the gentle humor of the scenario.
Let’s also applaud the director’s decision to avoid weighing down the story with an overly emphatic romance between the chief and the customs officer. It’s the (strong) women in the film who hold the attention. And the penultimate scene, where Édouard Baer’s character (accused in May of harassment and sexual assault by six women) has to ask them for forgiveness for a reason that we won’t reveal, has a gentle irony that we enjoy savoring.