Qui m'aime me suive! (2019)
Directed by José Alcala

Film Review

After making a slew of documentaries since the late 1980s, José Alcala directed his first fictional feature, Alex, in 2005.  Although this film was well-received, it wasn't until 2011 that he released his next fictional work, an innovative and compelling entry in the thriller line, Coup d'éclat (2011), which gave its leading lady Catherine Frot ample chance to widen her dramatic repertoire.  Eight years on, Frot and Alcala team up again for an altogether different kind of film, an exuberant mainstream comedy, aided and abetted by two other much-loved monstres sacrés of French cinema, Daniel Auteuil and Bernard Le Coq.

Filmed in picturesque Montpellier in the sunny south of France, Qui m'aime me suive! (a.k.a. Just the Three of Us) looks like the result of a spectacularly nasty collision between the worlds of Marcel Pagnol and François Truffaut.  The plot owes a great deal to Pagnol's La Femme du boulanger, and the love triangle trappings are basically Jules et Jim reworked for the present Zimmer-frame generation.  This makes the film far more appealing and interesting than it actually is.  The fact that Alcala's sources of inspiration are so readily apparent reveals a disconcerting dearth of original thinking on his part.  Not only is his third feature painfully derivative, it is also unbearably crass, and we can take no pleasure whatsoever in watching three talented performers busting their collective guts trying to redeem a comedy that is so transparently beyond salvation.

Problem number one is that at no point does Alcala gives us any occasion to sympathise with his principal characters.  Auteuil is a miserable, mean-spirited wife-beating egoist of the worst kind; Frot is a muddle-headed old woman (a kind of Miss Marple on steroids) who, after putting up with her loathsome husband for thirty years, suddenly gets it into her head to go AWOL without really knowing what she wants; Le Coq is merely Le Coq, the hyper-attractive, deliciously smooth counterpoint to the quick-tempered bully Auteuil.  All three characters belong to the May '68 generation which believed it could change the world, but only ended up becoming willing adherents of a complacent planet-wrecking bourgeois consumer class.  None of the three characters has any depth, not one of them endears him- or herself to us.  All that we see is three actors performing way below their best in a desperate attempt to conceal what is too all apparent - that this is the worst film that any of them has so far appeared in.

In his previous two films, Alcala proved himself to be a more than competent director of actors.  Here, his direction is so light-touch that it is totally undetectable.  We've already had ample opportunity over the past few decades to witness Auteuil's habit of going way over the top when presented with a bad script, but even Frot - an actress who has rarely disappointed so far - seems to lose her bearings in this no-holds-barred fiasco.  Overplaying comedy is never a good idea, and Frot demonstrates this repeatedly as she goes from one histrionic outburst to another, spectacularly failing to extract even the slightest whiff of a laugh from the crass cliché sodden script that she foolishly signed up to.

And what, you may ask, led an actor of Le Coq's standing to agree to lend his talents to this leaking whoopee cushion of a disaster?  Compromising photographs or a well-stuffed brown envelope exchanging hands after dark may have been a motivating factor.  The film's title Qui m'aime me suive! - which translates as 'The one who loves me follows me' proves to be a challenge that is cruelly apposite.  A botched comedy of this level of ineptitude is only likely to arouse a sympathetic response from a handful of hardened masochists - hardly a mass following.

Film Synopsis

Gilbert and Simone are a retired couple who lead a somewhat hectic life in a tranquil village in the south of France.  Simone has grown tired of her irritable husband and has for some time been carrying on an affair with her neighbour, Étienne.  When her lover leaves the area, Simone decides she has had enough and immediately follows suit.  Not understanding the reasons for his wife's sudden departure, Gilbert resolves to find her and is willing to do anything to bring about a reconciliation with the woman he still loves above all others...