Au cas où je n'aurais pas la palme d'or (2012)
Directed by Renaud Cohen

Film Review

The difficulties of making a second film are humorously presented in this wacky comedy, which - as luck would have it - just happens to be the second film from director Renaud Cohen.   It has been over a decade since Cohen served up his first feature, the amiable comedy-drama Quand on sera grand (2000), so he obviously knows something about the problems of getting a second film off the ground.  Cohen even takes the lead role in the film, playing himself (or, one hopes, a caricature of himself) - a hypochondriac suffering from a creative block.  (Can it be an accident that Cohen's character bears more than a passing resemblance to Woody Allen's screen alter ego?)  Whilst Cohen's main idea has some mileage, the film's author struggles to come up with enough decent gags and plot ideas to sustain it through a feature-length film.  By the end of it you can't help feeling that Au cas où je n'aurais pas la palme d'or is a sublime example of the narcissistic self-absorption for which French cinema has a particularly bad reputation.   The best thing about the film is its title - it's a pity there isn't a special award at Cannes to acknowledge this.

Film Synopsis

Simon is a struggling unknown filmmaker in his mid-forties whose achievements fall way short of his expectations.  An actor bets he wouldn't shave all his hair off so to prove him wrong Simon does just that - and is horrified to find that he has a lump on his head he never knew existed before.  Naturally Simon is thrown into a state of panic by this discovery, which hits him like the cruellest and most unjust of death sentences.  Immediately, he goes out and gets himself examined by various doctors, who all calmly assure him that he has nothing to worry about.  Simon has never trusted the medical profession and knows for sure that he is not long for this world.  Unwilling to shuffle off this mortal coil without having achieved something worthwhile, Simon sets out to make the best film of his career, convinced that it will almost certainly be the last thing he will ever do...