Ce qui nous lie (2017)
Directed by Cédric Klapisch

Film Review

For a director for whom the busy urban landscape and rapid pace of modern living are so much a part of the fabric of his films, it feels like a radical departure that, for his latest feature, Cédric Klapisch should turn his back on the big city and instead set up camera in the tranquil depths of the French countryside.  Ce qui nous lie sees Klapisch imbibing to the full the natural splendour of French wine growing country - Burgundy to be precise - but instead of serving up something new he appears content merely to replay old songs that have somehow lost their appeal.  Far from being a grand cru, the director's latest populist indulgence is more a tepid table wine, one that is perhaps a little too sweetly saccharine for most tastes.

Klapisch is of course best known for his amiable student-centric comedy L'Auberge espagnole (2002) and its two sequels - Les Poupées russes (2005) and Casse-tête chinois (2014).  These snazzy, admittedly vacuous, feel-good comedies have brought the director fame and mainstream success but much of his other work has fallen by the wayside, a reflection perhaps of his inability - or unwillingness - to broaden out and embrace other themes and styles.  His latest film is yet more proof of this, a somewhat lazy attempt to transpose the likeable trappings of L'Auberge espagnole to a vineyard-based family drama, of the kind that has already been tackled, more successfully by other French filmmakers - Gilles Legrandin in Tu seras mon fils (2011) and Jérôme Le Maire in Premiers crus (2015).

Despite some input on the scriptwriting front from an experienced wine grower (Jean-Marc Roulot), Ce qui nous lie presents a somewhat superficial and woolly handling of the issues facing today's small vineyard owners in the face of commercial pressures.  Gilles Legrandin treats the subject far more convincingly in his film; Klapisch deals merely in bald clichés and borrowed ideas.  The attractive photography of the stunning Burgundy landscape is the film's main asset, but even this cannot distract from the recycled plot and the dull collection of two-dimensional archetypes that have the arduous job of carrying a stillborn narrative and with whom the film's authors expect us to engage.

It's pretty evident by now that Klapisch's forte is the full-throttle ensemble piece with a large cast of distinct and colourful (albeit superficial) characters zipping in and out of each other's intersecting storylines.  With a smaller principal cast and slower narrative pace, his failings as a writer and director become all too evident, and it is in his latest film's more intimate and serious moments that this becomes unbearable.  Part of the problem is the obvious lack of chemistry between the three leads - Pio Marmaï, Ana Girardot and François Civil are all talented performers but none seems particularly at home in this film.  The real killer is the writers' apparent inability to give their characters even the thinnest veneer of believability and render them remotely interesting.  If the protagonists in Klapisch's previous films seem hollow and two-dimensional, here they are practically transparent.

Soppy flashbacks (which rapidly becomes wearisome), an intrusive voiceover and some attempts at forced emotionality are the laziest devices for instilling some depth into the protagonists - three ill-matched siblings struggling to connect and safeguard their family wine growing business -  when what is called for is convincing dialogue and authentic situations, rather than a deluge of soap-style artifice dressed up in Klapischian stylistic whimsy.  Ce qui nous makes a pleasant enough timewaster, best appreciated with a few glasses of decent wine inside you, but what it fails to deliver makes far more of an impression that what it somehow manages to scrape together: a complacent rehash of second-hand ideas, served up with no real engagement or panache.

Film Synopsis

Juliette and Jérémie are two siblings who have chosen to stay at home to help their father run his winegrowing business in the heart of Burgundy.  Their older brother Jean, now in his thirties, has settled in Australia after travelling the world, to start a family of his own.  Juliette and Jérémie are taken by surprise when, unexpectedly, Jean returns home, ostensibly over concerns that his father may be close to death.  Whilst Juliette is pleased to see her absent brother after all these years, and intends doing all she can to persuade him to stay, Jérémie is suspicious over Jean's motives and has some difficulty accepting the prodigal's unwished-for re-appearance.  When his father dies suddenly Jean makes up his mind to stay, at least for the time being, to help his siblings with the coming harvest.  Heavily in debt, Jean has good reason for selling his father's vineyard, but his brother is confident he can make a success of the inherited business by going into partnership with neighbouring winegrowers.  Juliette has her own ideas...