Film Review
After the immense success of
Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis
(2008), which attracted a record-breaking audience of 20 million
spectators in France, you could forgive Dany Boon for opting out of the
show business lottery and heading off to some distant tropical shore to
live a life of luxurious indolence on the proceeds of his one great
triumph. But no, the lure of the greasepaint and the clapperboard
was evidently too strong to resist and Dany Boon is back, writing,
directing and starring in another ebullient, gag-filled populist
comedy. As I write,
Rien
à declarer has already notched up an audience of 8
million and is likely to be the biggest French hit of the year, if not
the decade. You'd almost think Dany Boon is the reincarnation of
Gérard Oury - he certainly has Oury's flair for making
crowd-pulling comedies of the kind the French are particularly
susceptible to.
Rien à declarer is
Boon's third film to date and, for better or for worse, it has a great
deal in common with
Bienvenue chez
les Ch'tis. Both films are unsophisticated buddy comedies
which make light of racial intolerance, mainly by resorting to some
pretty outrageous racial stereotyping. Whereas the earlier film
dealt with the north-south divide in contemporary France, this one
pokes fun at the ancient schism between France and Belgium.
Racism remains a major issue in France, so the film is highly topical,
but by resorting to facile stereotypes its message somehow manages to
get lost along the way. Had the film confronted the issue of
racism more directly, perhaps through France's relationship with its
former African colonies, it might have been a more worthy effort,
although it would no doubt have bombed at the box office. For
some reason, the French just don't find the Algerians as funny as the
Belgians.
Technically,
Rien à declarer
is superior to
Bienvenue chez les
Ch'tis - Boon appears far more confident in his direction and
the film is somewhat better structured. However, its anti-racist
subtext is handled with far less subtlety and much of the humour (which
revolves around a typically patronising French view of the Belgians)
can be misinterpreted as overtly racist. Even though the Belgians
are world-renowned for their generous, self-deprecating sense of humour
(lol), something tells me that this film is unlikely to be as
well-received in Belgium as in France. The film's main strength
- Benoît Poelvoorde's hilarious portrayal of a rabid Francophobe
- is also its main weakness. The caricature is so grotesque, so
over-the-top, that it not only robs the film of any sense of reality,
but it also masks the more subtle humorous contributions from the other
actors. (A propos, the same applies to Karin Viard's coiffure
nightmare, which looks like something out of a 1950s sci-fi B-movie.)
Critical reaction to
Rien à
declarer has been generally lukewarm, although this is probably
to be expected in the light of Boon's previous runaway success.
Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis would
have been an extremely hard act to follow for any director, and yet
Dany Boon makes a fairly decent fist of it. Admittedly the humour
is somewhat more scattergun and prone to juvenile vulgarity than in the
previous film, but most of the gags hit the spot. Whilst
Poelvoorde comes close to turning this into a one-man (and even
one-gag) show, he is irresistibly funny and is effectively partnered
with Boon in a Francis Veber-like double act (reminiscent of the now
legendary pairing of Gérard Depardieu with Pierre
Richard).
Rien à
declarer is unlikely to do much for Franco-Belgian relations and
is perhaps a little too silly for its own good, but if you can make
allowance for its occasional shots of lavatory humour and take the
egregious racial stereotyping in the spirit in which it was intended,
it makes an enjoyable rib-tickling romp. If this doesn't cause
Belgium to put back its border controls and declare war on France
nothing will.
© James Travers 2011
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.
Next Dany Boon film:
Supercondriaque (2014)
Film Synopsis
1st January 1993 is a historic date for Europe, the date on which
border controls are lifted for countries within the European
Union. One man who is not happy with this development is Ruben
Vandervoorde, a customs officer in a small town on the Franco-Belgian
border. A rabid Francophobe and lifelong Belgian nationalist,
Ruben is outraged when he is forced to set up a mobile customs team
with his French counterpart and sworn enemy, Mathias
Ducatel. Convinced of the superiority of his country, Ruben
is determined to put Mathias in his place. So much for the
entente cordiale...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by frenchfilms.org and must not be copied.