Ma vie en l'air (2005)
Directed by Rémi Bezançon

Film Review

Whilst it is hard to overlook the obvious similarities with Cédric Klapisch's Les Poupées russes (2005), Rémi Bezançon's first feature Ma vie en l'air is a feisty blend of coming-of-age drama and rom-com that marks its director out as a promising new talent to watch out for.  The script's multiple failings include an all-too-mechanical plot that dishes out too many tired old clichés to be credible and an ensemble of archetypal characters that have an uphill job engaging our sympathies.  It's to Bezançon's credit that he manages to turn all of this formulaic hokum into an eminently likeable film, showing a flair for stylisation that will be better utilised on his subsequent films: Le Premier Jour du reste de ta vie (2008) and Un heureux événement (2011).

The romantic side of the narrative is drearily predictable, but fortunately there is another side which gives the film far more in the way of charm and substance - a warm-hearted reflection on the importance of family life and friendship, a theme that Bezançon would return to again and again in later films.  Here, the fledgling director is far more successful at playing for laughs than doling out the sentiment, although some of the nostalgia trips that make up the deluge of flashback inserts do strike a chord, mostly the ones involving Tom Novembre as Elbaz's long departed and dearly missed father.

Ma vie en l'air boasts a high calibre but not excessively starry cast of talented performers who each brings something valuable to the film.  Vincent Elbaz is admirably well-chosen as the central protagonist, a fragile thirty-something whose obsessive fear of flying is an obvious excuse for his reluctance to grow up and make the adult choices that will decide whether or not he will lead a fulfilled life.  Virtually unrecognisable as the sensitive blonde-next-door, Marion Cotillard has a stunning presence which makes Elbaz's preference for the comparatively ordinary Elsa Kikoïne totally incomprehensible.  Looking like Jean Dujardin's scuzzy younger brother, Gilles Lellouche finally gets a chance to shine (admittedly as an unwashed parasitic slob) in what was a break-through role - so well-partnered is he with Elbaz that you wish that Bezançon had concentrated on these two actors alone and made this a straight buddy movie.

One of the film's funniest sequences shows a speeded up 'day in the life of a slob' in which Lellouche happily couch-potatoes his way through an entire day in about thirty seconds of screen time.  Inevitably, with the script and the narrative focus all over the place, the film ends up being stolen by a supporting artiste, on this occasion Didier Bezace.  As the world's worst airline pilot, Bezace gives not only the most convincing character performance but also gets the biggest laughs, crashing every plane he attempts to pilot in a flight simulator test before going out and trying it for real. Rémi Bezançon's scattergun debut offering may put you off flying but it is unlikely to put you off watching his subsequent films, evidenced by the phenomenal success of his second feature Le Premier Jour du reste de ta vie.

Film Synopsis

Yann Kerbec has a morbid fear of flying, which he attributes to the fact that his mother died whilst giving birth to him in an aeroplane.  This crippling phobia prevents him from following Charlotte, the woman he has fallen madly in love with, to Australia, and results in him working for airline security, training pilots in flight simulators.  Unable to find a woman to replace his belle idéale, he allows his childhood friend Ludo to move in with him and share his solitary bachelor existence.  Then he meets Alice, the woman who has just taken up residence in a neighbouring apartment.  Yann soon discovers he is in love a second time, but just when he is ready to propose to Alice who should suddenly re-enter his life but Charlotte...