After “Love is better than life” in 2022, Claude Lelouch revisits a layer of sentimentality in “Finally”, a heavy and uncomfortable musical comedy.
Lino (Kad Merad) is a defense lawyer, married to Léa (Elsa Zylberstein) a movie star. Following brain problems, it is suddenly impossible for him to lie. Without a filter, he decides to move away from his family and set off on the roads of France. Armed with a trumpet, he loses himself in the variety of landscapes of France and mixes his destiny with that of the people he meets.
Director, screenwriter and producer: once again, Claude Lelouch invests himself in every creative process and offers a work in continuity with his previous projects. His admirers will therefore have something to be delighted with. For others, on the other hand, it will just be one more feature film to avoid so as not to be confronted with an unwelcome overdose of cloying sentimentalism.
Elsa Zylberstein and Barbara Pravi in “Finally”
© ZFF
Constructed in a non-linear way, “Finally” tells Lino’s story. But not only that. The story, already disjointed, is accompanied by false memories, hallucinations, glimpses from the past of certain characters and even illustrations of dreams. A melting pot of skits that mix into a chaos that is difficult to understand. If the director’s goal was to share with the audience the headaches frequently endured by his protagonist, then “Finally” could be considered a success.
However, his message is virtuous: money does not make you happy, love does. But this speech, simplistic, certainly, but full of good intentions, is lost in an accumulation of hackneyed witticisms hidden in pseudo-poetic dialogues. And when, after two hours of proclaiming the madness of the world through anecdotes of sexual assault or memories of the Vél’d’Hiv roundup, Lino proclaims in song “Everything that happens to you, it’s for your good”, one cannot help but find the wording far too inappropriate to detect any romanticism in it.
Lost in Lino’s skin, Kad Merad had accustomed us to better. If he struggles to infuse a little joie de vivre into his character, he offers a performance that is sometimes uncomfortable and leaves one doubtful. While she dazzled us in the role of Simone Veil two years ago, Elsa Zylberstein slips naturally into that of Léa, but can do nothing about the lack of depth of her character. And, finally, at the heart of this pretentious cinematic mess, only the soft and lulling voice of Barbara Says leaves a positive imprint.
2/5 ★
More information on “Finally”
Trailer for “Finally”
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