Ensemble, c'est tout

Ensemble, c'est tout is an enjoyable romantic movie. The basic premise is of romantic comedy, but the treatment is different. There are lot of dramatic elements thrown in and the characters are given a long time to establish themselves in their given roles.

Audrey Tautou is one of my favorite actresses and she has done a wonderful job as always. But her performance is very similar to what she has done in other films and frankly I am getting a little bit tired of it. I mean it is wonderful but I would like to see her do something else too. She has been doing the Amelie act for a long time now.

Nothing is really new in the movie but execution is different, which kept me hooked. All in all, a very enjoyable movie.

I liked the film. Though it differs from the novel by Anna Gavalda. I imagined a bit another Franck, but Guillaume Canet is so charming, and I must admit that he perfectly fits his part. Audrey Tautou isn't the best Camille... but I'm used to her being the "prima ballerina" of the French cinema... I reckon that are Philibert (Laurent Stocker) and Franck (Guillaume Canet) who make the whole film worth watching. And of course I must admit Tautou's good acting. All the actors beautified the film. It's no use retelling the plot. It's not a detective story with millions of turns up. This film speaks about life. And you know, read the book first. That's my advice. The film isn't as good as its original. But nothing's perfect! And if you want to form your own opinion (not the director's one) about Camille, Franck, Philibert, Paulette...... both read and watch.

I have just seen the movie in Sydney and enjoyed it very much. My last movie was "conversation with a gardener" which I enjoyed equally. I was French for 27 years and movies that can bring me back to what I missed the most are indeed pleasing. Not that I could really identify with any of the characters but simply their actions and the settings in which they happened brought back vivid memories. One can philosophy as much as one wishes to. But I feel actors very heart of their vocation is to make the audience enjoy the reality of their acting. And this reality will affect any normal sophisticated or unsophisticated person if that person is not too busy playing the critic or demanding a particular agenda. Our life experience is something we can't deny, no matter whom we may be. So these 3 then 4 characters are just doing that following their dreams in a too human way, and the only way they know how to do it. I'm not too well versed in directors trends or particular project, I just manage to retain some actors'name, Tatou is now one of them, yet it's her characters that interests me. I'm simply feeling good, bad or indifferent with movies. Just like wine, I don't drink label, but hope to enjoy the taste. Why "Hunting and Gathering"? I certainly understand better "Ensemble, C'est tout". Am I missing something here? Just the same I'll have to agree - togetherness, even if a pain at times, is yet preferable to loneliness.

"Hunting and Gathering" is the penultimate film of Claude Berri, the last tycoon of French cinema. He passed away before completing his final project but I like to think of that one as the last one made under his full artistic supervision because it's a fitting ending to a rich body of work and the subject poetically closes an arc traced by his first feature film "The Old Man and the Child" with Michel Simon...

There truly is a poignant and satisfying feeling of full circle with the theme of people who overcome isolation and find a ray of sunshine in their lives through the presence of others. It's as simple as that but sometimes it's within the simplicity of moments such as people sharing a meal, a drink, a conversation that faith in happiness can be revived. The film might never leave a indelible impression, it's not on par with Claude Berri's celebrated works such as "So Long, Stooge", or "Jean de Florette/ Manon des Sources" but it does leave the viewer with with a little smile in your face and a great deal of satisfaction.

There are four protagonists, all wonderfully played by their respective actors, I did believe in each of them though I must admit I had a hard time sympathizing with Guillaume Canet's Franck who plays the bad boy with a golden heart. It's not his performance but rather the way he was perhaps the most "obvious" of all. He's a young chef who takes care of his grandmother Paulette (Françoise Bertin) a woman in her eighties and whose declining health put her in a retirement home, far from her little house, her garden and her cats. Oh I'm digressing, I was talking about Franck. The offspring of a failed union, left by both his parents and raised by Paulette, he built a defensive hard-to-get attitude to preserve himself from deception and drowns his bitterness in beer and one-night stands... life for his meals, love is one thing to make, not enjoy.

Franck isn't the only one with demons, there's Camille played by Audrey Tautou. She doesn't see eye to eye with her mother and works as a janitorial worker, she's anorexic, smokes a lot and lives in one of these studios in the top of Parisian buildings (called 'maid's rooms' die to their extreme coziness. She's got nerves, a dry sense of humor and doesn't strike as the girl who believes in a Charming Prince but she knows good person when she sees one. An office worker leaves some of his garbage outside the basket, she leaves a savage note on his office, a kindly neighbor, Philibert (Laurent Stocker) addresses her politely, she just invites him to a little improvised dinner in her room. Why? Maybe because unlike Franck, she can't force herself to believe that she can live without a good company every now and then. And unlike Franck, it's not sexual and somehow she felt that Philibert wouldn't think so either.

Philibert is a man with aristocratic background written all over his particle name, he has a stammer, wears a shapka and dresses like a dandy from the 50s, whatever made him the roommate of Franck might be the only "plot convenience" we could close our eyes on... Anyway, it all leads down to a night where Camille falls sick and Philibert takes her to her apartment, she needs a few day to recover and eventually meet Franck. Now. I still remember my initial feeling, I was so moved by the duo formed by Camille and Philibert that I felt like the film would lose its mindless charm if it had to surrender the something as formulaic as "boy meets girl - they hate each other - they fall in love" etc.

Well, it's a foregone conclusion that the two will fall in love but Berri's film doesn't care about clichés as much as it doesn't care about avoiding them . And no matter what, the film is less about two people who found love, than four people who found a certain state of grace once they opened their doors and therefore their hearts to each other... Philibert overcomes his handicap and pursue theater courses and finds love on stage... Paulette is hosted by her grandson and taken care of by Camille... and Camille and Franck, tease each other, resist the idea of falling in love to better throw themselves in. But again, love is less a plot device than a collateral healing.

We know that some facts of life will take their rights back but there's never a sense of major threat or some existential obstacle, it's just as if Berri knowing each film could be the last decided to free himself from that 'need of social relevance' like in his earlier movies ... We live in a world that is a constant temptation for isolation and cynicism and that the very director of "So Long, Stooge" with Coluche, could compose that hymn for togetherness can almost look utopian or naïve, but if such scenarios were that implausible, would the world really be worth to live?

Why couldn't an old woman die peacefully in the place she loved? Why would a man with a stutter not become an acclaimed comedian? Why wouldn't professional success be compatible with true love? In "The Old Man and the Sun", an old prejudiced man hid a little Jewish boy. He didn't know about his identity but it didn't matter, the kid became his best friend and the old man's soul was cleaned up. The stakes are lower in "Hunting and Gathering", no life-and-death situation, but the spirit is the same: maybe one of the key to happiness is to meet people who make us want to become better.

'Ensemble, c'est tout' (2007) is the last film that Claude Berri wrote (based on a novel by Anna Gavalda) and directed to the end. His filmography ends with another film ('Trésor'), which he was unable to finish and see released, the film being completed by another director. 'Ensemble, c'est tout' can therefore be considered as a beautiful end to his career, a 'feel-good' film, having at its center a love story as it happens with many of his successful films. The title, oddly enough, fits the story. It was strangely translated in the English distribution as 'Hunting and Gathering' (!).

The film has four main characters, and at the beginning of the story none of them seems too happy. Paulette, an old woman who lives alone in her house, surrounded by her beloved cats and parrots falls, fractures her hip and has to be hospitalized for surgery and a long recovery. Her grandson, Franck, the only one who takes care of her, is exhausted from his work as a chef in a restaurant and also takes care of his grandmother (and her cats). Franck lives in a huge apartment with Philibert, a young man from an aristocratic family, a rich boy, unhappy as well because he aspires to become a stand-up actor despite an obvious stutter. In the same Parisian building lives Camille, a pretty and modest girl, a talented portretist, who works hard as a cleaning woman for a living. The four loners will grow closer and turn their relationships into friendships and more than that.

The recipe for this kind of films can be found in the American comedies of the 40s and 50s of the last century. The role of young Camille is played by Audrey Tautou, an actress I adore, part of a series of roles of her that seem to be inspired by those played by the other Audrey - Hepburn - in American films. How is it that this formula, where the characters get better and better with little obstacles, and which seemed outdated even in the original films, works so well here? One of the secrets is, I think, the fact that the characters are believable and many of the situations described are part of real life experiences. Guillaume Canet and Françoise Bertin play their roles excellently, but next to the incomparable Tautou I would mention Laurent Stocker, an actor with a special comic talent in a delicious role. 'Ensemble, c'est tout' is an elegant farewell film that Claude Berri left us at the end of his career.