After his Chronicle of a fleeting affair, film presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022 in the Cannes Première selection, Emmanuel Mouret returns with Three friends, a new feature film in which he once again highlights the question of love through the adventures of three friends. Released November 6.
Joan, Alice, and Rebecca are old friends. Joan is in a relationship with Victor, but no longer feels romantic feelings for him, which makes her sad. Alice, whom love stresses and makes unhappy, has chosen to share her life with Eric, a man with whom she is not in love, but who she thinks is crazy about her. What Alice doesn’t know is that her Eric is committing adultery with her friend Rebecca…
Despite her guilt and Victor’s persistent and insistent love, Joan, who does not know how to act, ends up leaving him. This first act marks the beginning of a drama that will change the destiny and love lives of the three friends.
What is love? Why do we love, how do we love? This question runs through this new feature film by Emmanuel Mouret, a fan of the subject, who has used it throughout his entire filmography. The question is addressed here through three stories, three women, and three visions of love.
The friendship between Joan, Alice and Rebecca, and the secret affair of one of them with the husband of another creates the ideal conditions for a scenario made of interlocking and cause and effect particularly conducive to a dramaturgy vaudeville.
In this skillful construction game, Emmanuel Mouret takes the opportunity to draw up an inventory of the art of loving. Love like Joan, sentimental, sincere and reasonable, or like Alice, a fiery lover who prefers to opt for the security of a passionless love rather than suffer its pangs, or even Rebecca, the generous lover who forgets herself. Men, presented here in counterpoint, also each have their own way of loving.
But as the adventure progresses, and that’s the spice of the story, love and chance reserve surprises and turn the scenarios upside down. When the film closes, the lines have moved, in a direction we would not have imagined, with a hilarious nod to the role of artificial intelligence in this game of love and chance.
The whole story is told to us in voice-over by Victor, in a direct and knowing address to the viewer, like Woody Allen. We also find the Rohmerian vein of Mouret, this false simplicity in the staging and the dialogues, and this art of treating with subtlety and a mixture of lightness and depth a seemingly hackneyed subject.
In a fluid production bathed in beautiful light, this score is perfectly interpreted by the actresses and their male counterparts, who definitely take us into the twists and turns of this charming three-band romantic comedy.
Genre : Drama comedy
Director: Emmanuel Mouret
Actors: Camille Cottin, Sara Forestier, India Hair, Daniel Bonnard, Grégoire Ludig, Vincent Macaigne
Pays : France
Duration : 1 h 57 min
Sortie : November 6, 2024
Distributer : Pyramide Distribution
Synopsis : Joan is no longer in love with Victor and suffers from feeling dishonest with him. Alice, her best friend, reassures her: she herself feels no passion for Eric and yet their relationship is doing wonderfully! She is unaware that he is having an affair with Rebecca, their mutual friend… When Joan finally decides to leave Victor and he disappears, the lives of the three friends and their stories are turned upside down.
