After a monotonous day working with disillusioned music students, Xavier (Bernard Campan) returns home in a bad mood, where a nasty surprise awaits him. Indeed, his wife, Sophie (Isabelle Carré), has invited the upstairs neighbors over for dinner. It must be said that the grumpy professor harbors a strong resentment toward the couple — Adèle (Julia Faure) and Alban (Pablo Pauly) — who regularly wake him from his sleep in the middle of the night with their noisy antics.
Sophie, for her part, is hopeful that the flame that animates her two neighbors will win her husband’s heart, and rekindle his desire somewhat, he who has not touched her for years. While the seven-hour leg of lamb is cooking in the oven, the couple in their fifties, worn out by years of living together, and the couple in their early thirties will try to ignore the rumbling malaise, before finally bursting the boil. Faced with the unbridled morals of their guests, Xavier and Sophie will be pushed to their limits.
Reprise of a 2020 Spanish feature film, Sentimentalitself adapted by its author from a play by Cesc Gay, And maybe more is a charming film, sometimes funny, often touching, which does not, however, escape a certain number of clichés in its vision of couples and intergenerational differences.
With simplicity and obvious happiness, the work of French filmmakers Olivier Ducray and Wilfried Méance fully assumes its borrowing from vaudeville theater, with all that this entails in terms of conventional jokes and caricatured characters — here carried by a quartet of impeccable actors who can only win over the audience. Special mention to Pablo Pauly, who achieves the balance between casual charm and annoying condescension.
The script and the staging are in symbiosis with this theatrical approach, in a unity of time and space forming a dynamic closed-door setting leaving all the space for the authenticity of the performers.
The camera follows the actions of the actors, but also alternates with wide shots in order to reinforce the overall scenographic impression and accentuate the voyeuristic effect on the viewer.
Olivier Ducray and Wilfried Méance certainly do not reinvent the wheel with this classic and nicely conventional film. One may, if he lingers on the subject and the grotesque characteristics of the characters, be upset by the superficiality of the conversation and the contrasts staged, as well as by certain jokes already heard a thousand times.
All in all, it brings to mind some fundamental truths about the difficulty of life as a couple and the fatalism of goodbyes. As soon as you accept the proposal, you have a good time, which neither revolutionizes nor involves any reflection. Pure entertainment, so as not to rack your brains.