So effective in action drama (Quantum of Solace, World War Z), Marc Forster loses finesse in the human drama (Finding Neverland, Christopher Robin). As the other would say, it in thick butter. And there are a lot of them on the toast, in Life According to Otto (VF of A Man Called Otto), remake of A Man Called Ove by Hannes Holm (Swedish Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film in 2017) based on Fredrik Backman’s bestselling novel.
Thus, under the direction of the director of the unclassifiable Stranger Than Fiction, who is working on a screenplay by David Magee — who we know is capable of the best (Life of Pi) like the worst (Mary Poppins Returns) — the grating chords of black comedy are abandoned in favor of the syrupier and more consensual violins of dramatic comedy.
An example ? Version Forster, this grumpy Otto (Tom Hanks in Tom Hanks playing the “baboon”) persists with a hardware store clerk who wants him to pay for six feet of rope when he only has five in his hands . Holm version, this psychorigid Otto (amazing Rolf Lassgård) returns to the hardware store to be reimbursed for the rope that broke… when he tried to hang himself with it. There is something infinitely sad and poignant in this bitterness. Something that is evacuated from the American version pulling the Hollywood strings that we know too well. But which, moreover, are very effective. It would be dishonest not to admit it, judging by the reaction of the public at the preview. It wasn’t crying, it was sobbing. It wasn’t giggling, it burst out laughing. All of this, Tom Hanks’ fault!
Life in gray and black
The actor carries Otto firmly on his sixty-year-old shoulders. A gray character (inside and out) in a gray (winter) landscape moving through a gray suburb (of Pittsburgh). Otto, who has just been pushed into retirement. Otto, who is the more or less official guardian of his neighborhood located in a cul-de-sac; he makes morning rounds, takes obsessive care over the cleanliness of the premises, expels unauthorized visitors, etc.
But under all this gray, there is black: Otto lost his wife six months ago. “There was no life before Sonya (radiant Rachel Keller), there is none after Sonya”, he will say. And he really believes in it. Until his daily routine is turned upside down by new neighbors: a couple with two children, soon to be three. They impose themselves with their disorder, their laughter, their improvisations. Their life, what! Her, especially (effervescent Mariana Treviño).
Through secondary plots deposited in the background (it is implicitly a question of ageism, transphobia, real estate embezzlement, etc.), we discover the past of this badly licked bear that is (today) Otto: in order to contrast, luminous flashbacks of sweetness have been meticulously placed in the darkest moments that the widower goes through.
Nice idea, moreover, to have entrusted the role of young Otto to the son of the star and producer Rita Wilson, Truman Hanks. Whose father, thanks to his talent, is the strength of the feature film, and, because of his talent, causes the rub: we can never forget that Tom Hanks is Tom Hanks. And if Tom Hanks is this sullen and angry, it’s probably for good reason. We are therefore immediately behind him, where the character should keep us at a distance.
We do not take out the handkerchiefs any less.