Western

Set with tongue-in-cheek humour in the drab townships of France's western seaboard region of Brittany, this likeable comedy rambles something chronic over its 2 hour running time and arguably could have been pruned in places.  Sergi Lopez plays a travelling shoe salesman whose car is stolen by an itinerant (Sacha Bourdo), an act which initiates an unintended journey of self-awakening for the former as, like a pair of modern day knight errant the two share a series of adventures, largely devoted to finding their true loves, together. 

Don't expect to die laughing but the film takes the odd-couple-on-the-road template of which the French are so fond (the film won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes and Best Movie at the French Oscars), and which Francis Veber has milked without mercy, forgoes the slapstick and invests it with some genuinely human touches thanks to Poirier's commendable script, Lopez's understated performance (a relative newcomer, Lopez featured in Poirier's previous three films) and Bourdo's endearing characterization.

Particularly thanks to the guitar-based score, and as is reinforced by the end-credits, stylistically the film is closer to Tony Gaitlif's peripatetic cultural excursions than Veber's more conventionally plotted efforts and offers an entertaining, perceptive, somewhat long-winded but ultimately cheerful look at la comedie humaine.

 

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