Looking for Eric (***)

If you’ve seen other films by the British director Ken Loach, you don’t expect him to make something whose plot reminds you of Woody Allen’s Play It Again, Sam. Loach is the director of realist dramas like the The Wind That Shakes the Barley, about the Irish War of Independence, Sweet Sixteen, about a Scottish teen trying not to follow his mom to jail, and Bread and Roses, about the plight of Mexican office cleaners trying to unionize in Los Angeles. Allen’s film had him getting romantic advice from the ghost of Humphrey Bogart. Or at least the movie version of Humphrey Bogart. There are two Erics in this movie; one, a football (soccer)-loving postman (Steve Evets), idolizes the other, former Manchester United superstar Eric Cantona, an occasional actor (Elizabeth) who plays himself. Cantona, the character, is not a ghost, but an imagined presence who functions the same way. His function is to give courage to postman Eric, who is panicking at the thought of having to face the ex-wife he betrayed long ago.

The movie is more or less a comedy, but it still a Loach film and not actually much like a Woody Allen film. Or, at times, a comedy. For one thing, Loach worked with the same screenwriter, Paul Laverty, as on his other recent work. And Cantona’s role, though obviously tailored to the plot of the movie, is less stylized than the movie-star version of Bogart who coaches Allen. It’s the celebrity as regular guy, rather than a movie star, who’s giving advice. Finally, while some of the interplay of postman Eric and his working-class buddies, and some of the now-in-French, now-in-English advice of the football star garners a few laughs, a good deal of the film would fit right into Loach’s dramas. (Aside from the French, some dialogue may be tough for American ears to follow.) In what amounts to a third of the movie, Cantona is absent. His earlier presences seems like a gimmick glommed onto what should have been a straight family drama. But the ending brings the dramatic and comedic elements together in a way that more or less justifies the concept. This is not the best of Loach’s movies. The other, more overtly political ones, make a stronger artistic statement. But it shows some versatility.

IMDB link

viewed 4/10/10 at Prince [Philadelphia Spring Preview] and reviewed 4/?/10

Welcome to the Sticks (**3/4)

Upon the U.S. opening of Intouchables, reportedly the second most popular homegrown film in French history, I became curious about this comedy, which is number one. It turns out to be a genial, middlebrow comedy about a Post Office supervisor (Kad Merad) whose scheme to get transferred to a nice seaside locale backfires. Instead, his destination turns out to be a small town called Bergues in the most northern part of France. The comedy largely rests upon the premise that the French (or, at least, ones from more southerly parts) think of the North as some awful backwater where the natives can barely speak and where it’s so cold you need parkas in the summer. The supervisor’s wife, with whom he’s been having marital issues, certainly thinks so, and decides to stay behind in the South with their son.

And so, alone, the husband moves, finds the locals peculiar but extremely friendly, the town charming, and so on, meanwhile telling his wife it’s as awful as imagined. A quick Google search would, at the very least, convinced her that the place at least had some visual charm, and that the climate wasn’t awful, but never mind. A lot of the humor stems from linguistic subtleties, including the unusual dialect and occasionally incomprehensible pronunciations. The subtitles in the version I watched did an excellent job of conveying the many such misunderstandings, though it’s the kind of thing where it’s probably funnier if you know the language. This might be one reason the film wasn’t widely released theatrically outside of French-speaking places, despite its success there. However, in its way it says as much about French culture as its more highbrow kin, something like what an Adam Sandler movie might say about a certain sort of American sensibility. (For one thing, it says that the French will accept a bald guy in a leading role.) By no means is this a great film—the hero’s turn from snobby jerk to one of the fellas takes like five minutes—and the humor is mostly middling, but it was fun to watch. The climactic scene in which the wife inevitably arrives for a visit did make me laugh despite it being pretty ridiculous. The director, incidentally, is Dany Boon, who plays the genial, still-living-with-his-mom postman.

IMDb link

viewed 6/2/12 via streaming video and reviewed 6/3/12