Lyon, nowadays. Joan confides to her best friend, a teacher like her, that she is no longer in love with Victor and that she finds it all the more difficult because he loves her like the first day. Alice tries to reassure her by explaining that she herself has never felt the slightest spark for Eric, which does not prevent them from being a happy couple. He never stops declaring his love for her while embracing a secret romantic relationship with Rebecca, the other great friend of the two women. But when Joan decides to leave her companion, he tragically disappears.
Emmanuel Mouret is the eternal interrogator of the variation of attractions without passing judgment. On the contrary, he shows empathy towards those whose emotions fluctuate, love being able to give way to another form of affection. Some are content with it, others resist as best they can. Once again, he offers great scores to his actors, starting with his main actresses, to whom he entrusts new jobs. India Hair is moving as a young woman with a dark destiny, in her way of accepting what she feels, capable of seriously hurting despite herself. His dilemma between his freedom and his guilt is depicted with rare complexity. Camille Cottin seems distant when she expresses her vision of the couple but she does not control her heart as well as she thinks. Absent from the screens for three years, Sara Forestier plays her most adult role, that of an independent woman capable of stepping aside when circumstances require it.
A charming but repetitive film
Some stories seem doomed to end and others to continue, despite the lack of love, but Mouret works to thwart expectations without betraying his characters who try to follow their own impulses and not those of others. Even if they are as benevolent as this professor who falls under Joan's spell, played with good nature by Damien Bonnard.
In addition to his favorites of sentimental marivaudage and romantic melodrama, Emmanuel Mouret adds a fantastic element with this character of narrator from beyond the grave played by Vincent Macaigne, already present in “Les Choses qu'on dit, les Choses qu 'we do' and 'Chronicle of a temporary affair'.
Like his previous films, “Three Friends” exudes a lot of charm even if it ends up repeating itself over the length. Fortunately, the director loses none of his talent for crafting literary and musical dialogues, the double meaning of certain remarks, placing the viewer in complicit complicity, with just the right amount of humor to lighten the weight of the dramatic situations.
Dramatic comedy by Emmanuel Mouret, with Camille Cottin, Sara Forestier, India Hair, Damien Bonnard, Grégoire Ludig and Vincent Macaigne.
