Imprison Outside

The Trouble With You

Film. The new comedy of the French master of the genre, Pierre Salvadori, received the grand prize of the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes. Presentation.

By Jacques Braunstein

The Trouble With You begins as a good big American action movie, apartment dealers stormed, gunfights and stunt… But this is a false trail, Yvonne (Adele Haenel), wife cop, tells his son his father exploits (Vincent Elbaz), killed in operation. Until the day she discovers that the reality is less glowing, her husband is a ripoux. He has given the hat to an innocent : Antoine (Pio Marmaï), who will soon leave prison. Intoxicated by his freedom, and exasperated to know that he was the victim of a plot, he blows a fuse : a fight, a willful fire, a robbery … It will be very difficult for Yvonne to prevent him from going back behind bars.

The Trouble With You won the SACD Prize at the Directors' Fortnight in Cannes this year

Pierre Salvadori is perhaps the best French director of current comedy. From Cible émouvante (1993), with Marie Trintignant, to Priceless (2006), with Audrey Tautou, by way of Les Apprentis (1995), with Guillaume Depardieu, he developed a style that is halfway between the mainstream comedy, funny but not always fine, and the auteur cinema that makes you smile, but in the corner at most. The Trouble With You has also won the SACD Prize of the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes this year, a kind of Palm d’Or of the event (with a more complicated name).

Salvadori masters all areas of comedy, from vaudeville to visual gags, and from screwball to slapstick (as the most advanced critics would say). Antoine, who smokes with a plastic bag on his head, where he finds himself doing a robbery in SM outfit, scenes as improbable as brilliant succeed each other and demonstrate the know-how of the director. Too maybe ? The question arises, because it is when he shows the simple tenderness that Salvadori is the best. Pio Marmaï who finds his wife (Audrey Tautou) when he leaves prison. The look of Damien Bonnard on his colleague, Adèle Haenel which he is secretly in love… The virtuosity of the film may have been worth its Award, but it is its charm that makes it valuable.

VOIR AUSSI