Adaptation of the eponymous novel of Nicolas Mathieu, Their children after them is the big hexagonal production that comes out these days in theaters. Directed by the Boukherma brothers (Teddy, Year of the Shark), product (among others) by Gilles Lellouche and distributed by Warner Bros, the feature film offers us a stifling dive between the summers of 1992 and 1998 in a lost bled from eastern France.
A book above all
Anthony (Paul Kircher, already great in The Lycean and more in The Animal KingdomAnd who is here, let's hurry to say, the great strength of the film) fuck closes with his cousin. If they're about to visit the ass-naked beach, it's hopeless to see something other than some old ones roasting in the sun. Yet they fall on two young girls and for Anthony, it is the immediate lightning strike for Stephanie. They invite them to a party that night. They go there secretly stinging Anthony's father's motorcycle (Gilles Lellouche). After a drunken night, a blow of fate ended the violence of their hangover: the bike disappeared...
Let's start by talking about the book. Nicolas Mathieu deploys with Their children after them then Connemara A few years later a real geographical continuum (the rural France of the East and its social classes, to say it quickly) as well as stylistic. And the first thing that comes to mind when reading Nicolas Mathieu is how much more interested he is in the description than in the narrative. Each action is filled with descriptive digressions as soon as possible. Descriptions often distilling clues about the social condition of the environment depicted by the book.
« Men spoke little and died early. Women made colours and looked at life with optimism that went down while attributing. When they were old, they kept the memory of their men dying at work, at the bistro, silicized, of sons killed on the road, not to mention those who had made the trunk.»
A cribbed writing of a certain Celinian triviality: in a few pages of the opening of the novel, we talk about "pumps of bare asses", to hope "out of the chicks", "unbelievable women", we paid "200 balls of kunk" and his "first fart"... The brands (Vittel, Prisu, Vache qui rit, Ray-Ban...) take on a quasi-metonymic role and allow Nicolas Mathieu to situate sociologically and temporally his story.
A handful of literary considerations that it is good to keep in mind when we see the adaptation of the Boukherma brothers, as they absolutely return each of these characterizations. A narrative made of constant descriptive digressions, one draws a film that never takes the time to see, which is so afraid of its duration (2h20) that he always worries about creating rhythm, sometimes well artificially. A book perclusive of social considerations evacuates almost completely this aspect, relegated to a few (blessings) plans of blast furnaces become cathedrals and a speech hardly touching the subject. It is better than that to narrate a story of love – seen and reviewed – which from the sub-intrigue of the book becomes the integral motor of the narrative. Finally, from a speckled text of this multiplicity of trivialities, we lay a film with classic aesthetics, clean, certainly (usually) very pleasant to watch but finally very vain.
Anti-Love Ouf?
Couldn't miss it, Their children after them lorges much on the side of a movie sensation of the end of the year: LoveGilles Lellouche. And the latter's presence in the casting is not the only common feature of both works. It is indeed the actor and director who had acquired the rights of Nicolas Mathieu's novel (and who should have made the adaptation), before becoming one of the producers of the project passed into the hands of the Boukherma.
If anyone talks about anti-Love to describe Their children after themYet we are faced with the same genealogies of film objects. We know about the grey to grey shaded social films, we also had the colorful characters coming straight from the cho-Nòrhd of the filmography of Bruno Dumont, we now have the tape-to-eye juke-box cinema carried away in the wake of the ego-paquebot Lellouche. On the programme: prolo-porn, eroding lovers and Arab villains. And if Their children after them Adhesive to the structure of the book (the party, the theft of the motorcycle by Hacine, the explosion of the family cell, revenge, etc.), the film conveys all the sociological content of the book in its form. And from this emptiness there remains only one intrigue a somewhat embarrassing, racist molassation, which stops at a timely point: the World Cup 98, the joy of the people. There's no need to really talk about what we're leaving this France with crumbs (she only has to cross the street...), there's no need to dig into the question of racism, there's no need to think about who Anthony is going to vote for in four years since look at them, they're happy. Move, there's nothing to see, the France Black-Blanc-Beur taps in a balloon and hop, a little Johnny hit, a little Cabrel hit, and we move on...
No, the only straddling segment of this movie version of Their children after themIt is the one dealing with the filial relationship between father and son. And the annihilating disinherence (and a touching touch, let's admit) of this alcoholic and dumped father. Let's give him that, his ability to never bore in two or twenty hours of film (what's the point?) and images rather beautiful bill. It's better than nothing. Stays a tip before risking this film version: dare to rub on the beautiful pages of Their Children after them by Nicolas Mathieu, who had the taste of winning a Goncourt and also being a very good novel. Like, anything is possible!
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