Posted at 9:00 a.m.
After The invisiblea comedy-drama about a shelter for homeless women, and discounta film that denounces food waste, Louis-Julien Petit offers a new social comedy, Squad. This time, the director looks at the fate of migrants in France, through the meeting between a culinary chef and twenty Africans who are still minors, waiting for papers to realize their dream of a better life.
The title refers to the brigades of cooks found in large kitchens, where discipline and team spirit are law. The main character, Cathy Petit (Audrey Lamy, the best ingredient in the film, by far!), will have to tame a hostile environment, before finding her true values. To better reconcile with her destiny as a solitary woman in her forties.
Between laughter and emotion, the French filmmaker wants to show that an impromptu encounter, an unprecedented event, can make humans better. And that a film manages to upset lives, if not to change the world.
Unfortunately, the cutesy story, sewn with white thread, as well as the uninspired direction and the uneven distribution prevent this film full of good feelings from taking off. Worse, Squad drowns its subject in the implausibility of the world it depicts. All the characters, as much the migrants, the social workers as those of the television and the restoration, are arch caricatural.
As we are in constant exaggeration, the proposal of social cinema is not very credible. At the end, we pay squarely in the parody of reality shows, while Cathy participates in the show The Cook (yes! another English title for a French show). A criticism of the television show that takes us away from the terrible drama of young migrants. The filmmaker may be “solidarity and commitment” to the cause, by dint of mixing genres, surfing between comedy and drama, his film treats his subject on the surface. And without conviction.
Comedy
Squad
Louis Julien Petit
With Audrey Lamy, Francois Cluzet, Chantal Neuwirth
1hr 37mins
Indoors