Gerald Cooperberg
09-15-2007, 05:50 PM
Just caught this film in the theater this afternoon. Don't know much about the director (Christophe Honoré), but I really liked it. It tells the story of a day in the life of two brothers, Paul (Romaine Duris) and Jonathan (Louis Garrel), filling in some background through flashbacks. Paul has moved back in with his brother and father (Guy Marchand) in their Paris apartment after the dissolution of a serious relationship and finds himself immobilized by depression. Jonathan, meanwhile, seems unable to sit still-- while his brother mopes around without ever leaving the flat (the titular irony), he runs all over Paris, ducking responsibilities and bouncing from bed to bed of all-too-willing women. The film is marked by several stylized (but not precious) setpieces and an engrossingly jazzy score credited to Alex Beaupain. Duris does fine work with a role that has the potential to be gratingly morose, Marchand strikes the right low-key notes as the family's superficially ineffective patriarch, and Garrel has an assured physical presence which makes his womanizing easily believable. Overall, I'd recommend it to any fan of French cinema or anyone that's looking for a thoughtful but not ponderous drama about the importance of family.
-Coop
-Coop