“Until the end of life, we have a mission.” This sentence, uttered by a “colleague” of her age, will serve as a trigger for Émilie (Yolande Moreau), a septuagenarian who has just lost her only son and who finds herself, overnight, for lack of money, expelled from the nursing home where she occupied a room. It's the start of a strange escapade, at once comical, poetic and melancholy, in which it is about a little green notebook and a list of names to cross off. Names, six in total, which are people who have at one time or another humiliated, hurt or belittled Émilie. During his (almost) wild adventure, there will be a lousy hostage-taking with an alarm gun, or even a rodeo on a vacant lot which will end badly for a Citroën C4.
Émilie will also be emulated. At least one: Linda (Laure Calamy), a cleaning lady also damaged by life. Together, we are stronger, we are crazier. Even if two not very fit police officers, played by Anna Mouglalis et Raphaël Quenard, very weakly set out in pursuit. “ For this two-person escapade, I had Thelma and Louise in mind, but without violence or bloodshed. “, explain Gustave Kervern, who is making his first television film here, after ten co-written and co-directed cinema films (Louise-Michel, Mammuth, Eraser l'histoire…) with his accomplice, Benoît Delépine.
A NICELY CRAZY ROAD-MOVIE
« Revenge comes through words, and a little through actions too, to make others aware of the harm they have caused. I first thought of a hard-pressed retiree unable to pay for her nursing home, then imagined that she is accompanied by another woman who has things to sort out: a maintenance worker, she is one of these shadows invisible. Then the duo of police officers was formed, who have almost the same injuries, lifelong pain, and who carry their sadness through life and into their investigations.. » Awarded at La Rochelle Fiction Festival 2024 as Best Direction for Fiction, Jhe won't let me do it anymore is both a road movie, quiet but gently crazy, and a scathing comedy filled with small moments of grace.
Like the moment when a character dressed in black, seemingly austere and leading a burial ceremony in a church, begins to sway and dance to the rhythm of a punk-rock song played to pay tribute to the deceased. Or this funny and poetic scene where the character of Raphaël Quenard, very soaked and injured in the back after having exploded a glass coffee table, observes himself for a long time in the mirror of his bathroom to find where and how to stick a bandage, and ends up applying it to… the mirror. “ We all experience small humiliations in our lives, even trivial ones, frustrations that stay with us for years, and to which we regret not having reacted, explains Gustave. I wanted to tell that. »
I won't let it happen anymore, Friday November 29 at 8:55 p.m. on Arte
