Gilles Lellouche goes behind the camera for his first solo production: Le Grand Bain. For the occasion he brings together a first-rate cast composed of Mathieu Amalric, Guillaume Canet, Benoït Poelvoorde, Virginie Efire, Leïla Bekhti, Philippe Katerine and Marina Foïs. An impressive and heterogeneous cast to tell this story of redemption.
Beautiful loosers very endearing
When we think of Gilles Lellouche, tenderness is not necessarily the qualification that comes to mind first. He has taken on roles of characters with rather high masculinity: cops, bosses, gangsters, machos, but rarely looser roles. It's unexpected to see him with a subject like this. The Great Bath marks the renewal of a group of men, forty or fifty years old, who are at the end of their rope. They struggle in life, in their family, in their heads. Depressed, good-for-nothing, invisible, they are characters who lack self-confidence, whom society has crushed, those left behind, those who are forgotten, who live in the shadow of the victors, youth or hierarchy. In short, a bunch of gorgeous losers like the Coen brothers like to portray. They're not as irredeemable as The Dude from The Big Lebowski, but you get the idea. The characters are all relatively well written, with their demons, their sorrows and joys, their way of being what.
But it is obviously the actors who bring the necessary thickness to these characters. Amalric is always very accurate. In a role of depressive neurotic, he is a hit. All in subtlety, he is undoubtedly the hero of this story. Guillaume Canet is in the continuity of his Rock'n Roll character: a forty-year-old who suffocates in his tidy life, and who perhaps dreamed of more. Philippe Katerine is totally in his element since Lellouche wrote him a tailor-made role of absurd naïve simpleton. Benoït Poelvoorde is the little scammer of the gang. Leïa Bekhti is still the strong woman, who does not let herself be stepped on with a Virigine Efira surprisingly in the background. This is the strength and maybe the limit of these characters, they are played by great actors, but each one is in a role that he knows by heart. So necessarily the game is millimetered, but lacks curiosity. Katerine in the role of the blood, Canet in the absurd, Amalric as a scammer and Poelvoorde as a depressive, there we would have had real risk-taking. But Lellouche does not want to get too wet for his first production and places his actors in each of their boxes. No counter-employment, but this happy band works, the alchemy is at the rendezvous, and the group effect effective. The viewer becomes attached to these magnificent losers, who could be their father, marry, brother. Normal people what.
A melancholic writing that comes from the heart
The fear of aging, the fear of failure, regrets, the passage of time, so many evils that spare no one. Gilles Lellouche at 46 years old. Like Canet with Rock'n Roll, he also needs to express his fear of the passage of time, but with much more sincerity and success. The Big Bath is a bittersweet film, a melancholic comedy, which makes you laugh of course, but which also reminds us that the human being is not eternal. He reminds us that time passes, and that one day you wake up already old. Gilles Lellouche wants to explain that it is better to give everything for the thing you want rather than wasting your time with assholes who create your company. Finally, the subject is not very innovative, and Gilles Lellouche is not the first to make these often illusory promises of the American dream. Because, no, we don't always get what we want. And the fact that these aging men win the gold medal reflects this moralizing effect, this illusory happy ending effect. Gilles Lellouche wants to make a positive film, promising that the day of glory is never too late, that it can always happen.
The moral is relatively simple: life is sad, but with mutual aid and communion it immediately becomes joyful. But Le Grand Bain is a real success, a feel-good movie as the French rarely do, except maybe the duo Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache. This time no racist valves, no homophobia, we are very far from what did we do to the good god. Because even if Lellouche's film is a little naïve, it is made with so much spontaneity that it is difficult to remain insensitive. Gilles Lellouche put his guts into this film, it feels, he talks about what he worries him personally. And that's what allows the film to work completely.
Gilles Lellouche signs a very effective comedy, which relies on his very solid cast. The writing of the characters is rather sought after and offers these tired figures, at the end of their lives, who get up thanks to a common goal, but especially thanks to mutual aid.
