We can hardly watch Fathers profession without feeling any discomfort. It is as if the filmmaker Jean-Pierre Améris (The man who Laughs, The emotional anonymous) had not made up his mind to settle on the right key to tell a very dramatic story, which however is not yet in the eyes of a 12-year-old boy.
By adapting the first part of Sorj Chalandon’s autobiographical novel, devoted to his childhood, the director thus echoes a world invented in a completely eccentric way by a mythomaniac man, a hero in the eyes of his son, whose pathology is manifest. The result is an imbalance so that the more fanciful part of the character – endearing in a certain way – takes precedence over a reality which we know in advance that it will not be able to lead to anything other than a drama.
Of course, this scenario device is designed to translate the distraught love that a son feels for a father who tells him about his glorious past as a popular singer, sports champion, spy, and even personal advisor to De Gaulle, this general whom he loathes today because he is preparing to recognize Algeria’s self-determination.
In this setting evoking France in the early 1960s, Benoît Poelvoorde slips with ease into the skin of an extraordinary character, loving and psychopath (sometimes even within the same scene), facing Jules Lefebvre, excellent in the role of the boy. More self-effacing, Audrey Dana plays a mother submissive to her husband, who tries to pick up the mess as best she can.
In this film out of balance, we will also be able to establish links with our time in terms of the emergence of conspiracy theories and their transpositions into real life. But it will not leave an indelible mark.
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Drama
Fathers profession
Jean-Pierre Ameris
With Benoît Poelvoorde, Jules Lefebvre, Audrey Dana
1 h 45