What is the new Claude Lelouch worth, finally? [critique]

After two catastrophic films, the filmmaker is going back on track, buoyed by the slaughter of Kad Merad

This film will in no way reconcile the anti-Lelouch with his cinema. But for others, it marks a relief. The return to form of a director who one might have thought definitively lost after two films that were as quickly seen as they were forgotten (The Virtue of Imponderables who hadn't even found the way to the rooms and Love is better than life) light years away from the major works he was able to create. A work like a return to the sources. Because its hero is the son of the characters of Lino Ventura and Françoise Fabian (who reprises her role here and whom we always enjoy seeing on screen) in one of his classics, Happy New Year whose shadow and images hover over this Eventually. And because his story dialogues with that ofItinerary of a spoiled child : a lawyer who leaves everything – job, family, friends – to rebuild himself after a burnout and undertakes a walk across France to achieve this.

Love, chance, coincidences and aphorisms about life and death as only he can invent them are on the program here. So 100% pure Lelouch. But what changes compared to his two previous films is his incarnation. Historically, from Trintignant to Belmondo via Dutronc, Catherine Deveuve, Marlène Jobert, Serge Reggiani and Michèle Morgan, popular stars have been part of the DNA of Lelouch cinema. It is also partly because he had not been able to attract those of the time (Sophie Marceau, Juliette Binoche, Emmanuelle Béart…) that he experienced a slump in the second part of the 90s And it seems anything but a coincidence that his best recent films –. Station novel, Bastard we love you, One plus one And The most beautiful years of our lives – were respectively headlined by Fanny Ardant, the Johnny Hallyday-Eddy Mitchell duo, Jean Dujardin, and the Jean-Louis Trintignant-Anouk Aimée couple. Kad Merad belongs to that family. And his enthusiasm at being in front of the camera of a filmmaker he admires and his dexterity in slipping into the skin of this character throughout this journey populated by music and songs burst through the screen. Not everything is perfect in Eventuallyfar from it. It regularly borders on the very involuntary grotesque. But Lelouch's boyish enthusiasm – which can be compared with Coppola from Megalopolis – carries many things in its path. His relevant view on actors too. He thus offers his real first significant role on the big screen to Françoise Gillard, a member of the Comédie Française whom he had spotted in a show she had created around Alain Souchon. She plays a farmer, married and mother with whom the lawyer played by Kad Merad falls in love. An impossible love way On the road to Madison. And its skin-deep interpretation alone justifies the discovery of this Eventually.

By Claude Lelouch. With Kad Merad, Elsa Zylberstein, Françoise Gillard… Duration: 2 hours. Released November 13, 2024