the sweet revenge of a duo of heroines like Thelma and Louise on the roads of the North

ARTE – FRIDAY NOVEMBER 29 AT 8:55 P.M. – FILM

If we offered ordinary mortals the opportunity to program a series of revenges which would be carried out against all those who had slighted them, we would probably obtain a compilation of black comedies and horror films. (decapitation of disappointing mechanic, pillorying of contemptuous teachers et al.).

Gustave Kervern is not a mortal like the others: he belongs to the very minority category of the gentle (as a filmmaker, in any case, all the films he made with Benoît Delépine use gentleness to lubricate the brutality of the world). This is why, despite its title in the form of a declaration of war, I won't let myself do this anymore is a comforting film, which contrasts the cruelty and stupidity of everyday life with the cheerfulness, ingenuity and patience of a duo of heroines, distant northern and non-violent (or almost) cousins ​​of Thelma and Louise, the two protagonists of Ridley Scott's film (1991).

Emilie (Yolande Moreau) lived in a nursing home until the death of her depressed son, distinguishing herself from the other residents by her refusal to watch television and her love of Botticelli. What remains of her heirs is not willing to pay the monthly bill, and, rather than accepting her transfer to an establishment that is necessarily less comfortable, Emilie decides to hit the road in order to find those who have done her wrong. wrong throughout his completely ordinary existence.

She begins with a former classmate who made fun of her in 6^e (Philippe Duquesne), continues her tour, stopping at the address she occupied for decades with her late husband. There, she settles scores with the once-negligent owner (Aurélia Petit) who gentrified the accommodation.

Mouglalis and Quenard as neurotic police officers

In this journey backwards, the retiree takes Lynda (Laure Calamy), a maintenance worker at the nursing home from which Emilie was kicked out, a modest and timid soul who quickly gets caught up in the game of retribution. I won't let myself do this anymore was presented in September at the La Rochelle Fiction Festival at the same time asA devoted friendan anxiety-provoking miniseries in which Laure Calamy played a mythomaniac who feeds on the misfortune of others. The juxtaposition between the two roles (which can be reproduced at home, A devoted friend is available on Max) gives an idea of ​​the richness of his register.

Gustave Kervern, who is making his first solo work here, after two decades of duo with Benoît Delépine, practiced comedy sketches (in “Groland”) and road movies (Mammuthin 2010, for example, or Holy Lovein 2016, which was more specifically of the wine route genre). I won't let myself do this anymore threads the comic pearls on the thread of the journey of the two women. Limited to the northern departments of our country, this wandering allows the director to film again these spaces on which he has so often grown his fictions: areas of activity, housing estates without a center of gravity, impersonal architecture. And, as usual, life arises despite the sterility of the place.

Bringing together a good part of the Deschiens troupe (in addition to Philippe Duquesne, we will find Olivier Saladin and Olivier Broche), he entrusts other secondary roles to well-known figures who have fun and have fun for the duration of a sequence. Emilie's daughter-in-law and her new companion are played by Marie Gillain and Jonathan Cohen; Alison Wheeler makes the director of the nursing home an unexpected comic creature. The addition of these talents does not mask the essential: the birth and growth of the bond between the two fugitives, who reclaim their lives, from absurd revenge to hasty escapes.

This is because they have another poetic duo on their heels, made up of neurotic police officers. The first questions the suspects in a deep and tired voice, it is Anna Mouglalis; the second cannot help but pepper the investigation with incongruous remarks, with the accent that we know from Raphaël Quenard. Gustave Kervern and the two actors pervert this imposed figure of French television, the duo of cops with different methods, by gradually erasing the distance which separates the delinquents from the representatives of the order, until they are brought together in the large community of those who struggle to find their place in the world.