French actor and director Benoît Podalydès has created a new poetic and offbeat comedy entitled “La petite vadrouille”, released on June 5. A tender film in the form of a “canal-movie” on a barge with Daniel Auteuil, Sandrine Kiberlain and Denis Podalydès.
Justine (Sandrine Kiberlain), her husband (Denis Podalydès) and their whole group of friends think they have found a solution to solve their money problems: organize a fake romantic cruise for Franck (Daniel Auteuil), a big investor, who is looking to seduce a woman. Poetry, lightness and schoolboy humor are there for Bruno Podalydès’ eleventh film as director.
Along the canals, to the rhythm of the locks, with Bruno Podalydès who appears as a barge captain disguised as an admiral, the film tells a story of class struggle, reveals a jealous husband and reveals a woman trying to escape the monotony of her couple. Daniel Auteuil, as a wealthy industrialist, plays a truly comic role and participates, almost like a spectator, in the vaudeville which is played out at his expense.
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A tender film that lacks madness
Bruno Podalydès is the director of great films. He notably signed “Comme un avion” in 2015 and “Les deux Alfred” in 2020. According to the critics of the cinema debate on the Vertigo show on June 5, unlike some of his previous productions, “La petite vadrouille” is It turns out to be a little long for its subject and the humor is not supported by a real societal critique.
“What I like in the cinema of Bruno Podalydès is madness. And there, in ‘La petite vadrouille’, I find quite little of it. At least, when it happens, it is a little too framed, like when you go through these locks and there is always a structure that locks you in. But it’s still nice to see”, underlines Rafael Wolf, film critic for RTS.
If “La petite vadrouille” seems to be a minor film in the director’s filmography, for Stéphane Gobbo, journalist for the daily Le Temps, certain very visual, even prodigious, scenes are still worth the detour: “If we have tenderness for Bruno Podalydès, we will have tenderness for this film.”
Lara Donnet
“La petite vadrouille” by Bruno Podalydès, with Sandrine Kiberlain, Denis Podalydès and Daniel Auteuil. To be seen in French-speaking cinemas since June 5, 2024.
