20 ans d'écart (2013)
Directed by David Moreau

Film Review

It's quite a leap, from bloodcurdling horror flick to Brit-style romantic comedy but it's a feat that French director David Moreau manages to pull off, with characteristically Gallic élan,as he makes his first foray into comedy, 20 ans d'écart.  The basic set-up is one that will doubtless be familiar to devotees of the British and American rom-com - an older woman gets herself mixed up with a young buck from a completely different milieu to her own, with predictably zany, heartstring-tugging results.  However, instead of merely aping an established format, Moreau uses it, quite subtly, to make some thoughtful observations on how society still continues to regard relationships between women and younger men, whilst, at the same time, taking some deservedly brutal swipes at the fashion industry.  In contrast to far too many mainstream French comedies these days, this one has some substance to it and doesn't leave you feeling short-changed.

Whilst the 'cougar' craze has taken Anglophone cinema by storm recently (blame it on Anne Bancroft - she set the ball rolling with her attempts to seduce young Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate way back in 1967), it has yet to take off in France.  For a country whose cinema is generally ahead of the curve on most matters appertaining to human relationships this would appear a tad implausible.  After all, films featuring older men forcing their attentions on young women go right back to the dawn of cinema, nowhere more so than in France.  20 ans d'écart takes the French romantic comedy into almost virgin territory (if you'll pardon the expression), and the rapturous reception it has received at the French box office is a sure sign that the cougars (i.e. women with a taste for younger men) are here to stay.

Of course, what most makes a great rom-com is the chemistry between its two lead actors, and  this is where Moreau's film strikes gold.  Whoever dreamed up the pairing of Virginie Efira, Belgium's top TV presenter-turned-actress, and Pierre Niney, a rising star of the Comédie Française, deserves something of the respect accorded to alchemists in the Middle Ages  - you'd almost think that the two actors had been genetically engineered (à la Brave New World) just so that they would complement each another perfectly in this one film.  Recently revealed in Frédéric Louf's J'aime regarder les filles (2011), Niney has not only a natural comic flair but also an ability for playing intimate dramatic scenes with an authenticity that belies his comparative inexperience as an actor.  Efira is simply wonderful - one of the most engaging, likeable and sincere comedic actress in Francophone cinema today.  What you get when two such talented and feisty performers are thrown together is as memorably spectacular as the result of lobbing half a pound of neat potassium into a bucket of water (albeit much funnier and not quite so harmful to the retina).

Enjoyable as the film is, it does take a while to get into its stride.  It is only after the first third of the narrative has fled past that it becomes apparent that 20 ans d'écart is not the lazy imitation of a trashy American rom-com that it seems to be but something much more substantial.   At this point, we see that the clichés have a purpose, which is not to insult our intelligence but to remind us of the sad truth that society is still extremely uncomfortable with the notion of an amorous relationship between a woman and a younger man.  It scarcely registers that several of the male characters in the film have much younger female partners, yet somehow the idea that a forty-year-old woman should become romantically involved with a twenty-year-old man is still one that provokes mirth and derision.  Are we reassured, or shocked even more, by the fact that the forty-year-old woman in question takes a young lover merely to enhance her career prospects?

The world has changed a lot since that carefree age of free love when young Dustin allowed Mrs Robinson to add the finishing touch to his expensive education, but clearly not enough for society to accept as normal the possibility that an older woman and a younger man might fall in love.  If, as the poets reckon, love is eternal, what difference can an age gap of twenty years make?  With the same skill and ingenuity he brought to his distinctive horror films, David Moreau toys mercilessly wth our prejudices, challenges our assumptions and leaves us in no doubt that, like it or not, the cougar will have her day...

Film Synopsis

Alice Lantins is 38, ambitious and so committed to her work that her personal life is virtually non-existent.  In short, she is the ideal candidate for the next editor of the fashion magazine Rebelle, or would be were it not for the fact that she appears to be stuck in a rut.  Then she meets Balthazar, a charming 20-year-old who, for some reason, takes an immediate shine to her.  Alice has no desire to start a relationship with him, until she suddenly realises how good it would be for her image if she were to acquire a nice, photogenic toy boy.  Believing Alice's interest in him to be sincere, Balthazar falls deeper in love with her and faces a terrible shock when he learns the truth...