We are in the dark hours of France. Paris laid down their arms to let Vichy collaborate with the Nazi invader. The Jews flee the City of Light darkened by verdigris. Joseph Haffmann (Daniel Auteuil), a wealthy jeweler, sees the worst coming like them and sends his wife and two children to the free zone. Before joining them in turn, the goldsmith makes an agreement with his employee, François Mercier (Gilles Lellouche). This one will become the new owner of the shop and the apartment of his boss just above, the time that the war ends, before returning everything to him on his return. The employee sees it as a good deed and a way to climb the social ladder, he who wants to offer everything to his wife, Blanche (Sara Giraudeau), with whom he is desperately trying to have a child. Only, Haffmann does not manage to leave Paris and finds himself reduced to hiding in his own cellar, with the complicity of the Mercier couple. A situation that will upset the relationship between the three characters.
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. François Mercier has the cobblestones and the trowel in hand here. Almost favorite actor of Fred Cavayé, Gilles Lellouche is misused in this role of “good bastard”. Crippled and sterile, frustrated, he sees in Haffmann everything he would like to be and the service his boss asks of him is the perfect opportunity for a man without stature. And here we are the spectators of what we often refuse to see: how Mr. Everyman becomes the worst of men. The psychological plot of the character created by the playwright Jean-Philippe Daguerre keeps us spellbound, because with the best of intentions, we are capable of anything. Lellouche does justice to this tortured character without giving him all the scope he deserves. However, with a big screen tenor like Daniel Auteuil to give him the answer, the necessary material was there. Auteuil, who could not miss a role even if he tried, is moving, but he is eclipsed by Sara Giraudeau, who delivers the most beautiful interpretation of this camera. Her quiet strength makes us embark on all the emotional elevators of Blanche with a disarming sweetness.
class struggle
theater cinema, Farewell Mr. Haffmann sees all its staging turned towards the psychology of the characters. Cavayé, who had the good idea to return to more dramatic films since the heartbreaking Cheap!, is inspired by his masters to restore the journey of his characters. There is for example Fritz Lang in his way of playing on the heights of plans, the framings as well as the floors of his decoration. In the same way as in The Hindu tomb, there is the basement and its rejects from society, the first floor where the classes intermingle and finally the second floor, that of social success. We also find Hitchcock in his way of using the sound of footsteps across the floor to insist on a glass ceiling of all dangers.
Above all, Fred Cavayé tells us about a social struggle. He also tells us about a balance of power through supported high-angle and low-angle shots that function like barometers. It is even this social aspect that he succeeds best in transposing to the screen. The historical part, too shown to be suggested and not enough to bring strong images, fails to restore all the tension that the outside world should pour into this camera. It is all the more unfortunate that the historical depiction of the director of the Second World War does not match the work of the sets, precise and delicate, which, in addition to giving a real added symbolic value, almost manages to make us smell the scent emanating from each room where the trio sealed their fate.