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I had the chance to see Le Prénom during an Air France flight. Flying is always a chance to see new movies and, taking advantage of the extensive menu of movies that are unknown in Mexico I took a chance with something I'll hardly see in my country. Between the various french productions I saw this one mainly because it was starred by Patrick Bruel, when I was a kid I enjoyed a lot his movie Le Jaguar (1996), so I decided to see his acting once again now that I have more experience and could appreciate it better.
Le Prénom is a sitcom which relies on a clever script and in the work of the actors, who play a group of friends (two marriages and a single man) that meet for a dinner to celebrate the future birth of the son of one of the couples. However when the name chosen for the baby is revealed it turns out completely unlikeable to the rest of the group. Vincent (Bruel) announces he will be called Adolphe in honor of a literary character of the XIX Century, but everyone else can only think about Adolf Hitler. From that point on the conflict between the five characters escalates, and during the evening secrets and quarrels will be revealed leaving no one untouched.
When it starts the movie is really good, the first discussion is between Vincent and Claude (Gillaume de Toquedec) the main opposer to the chosen name and it has great dialogs and convincing arguments for both points of view, it is ingenious, funny and definitively the best of the picture which, regretfully, can't keep this highpoint during all its runtime. When the movie goes on we find out Adolphe is not the real name for the kid and that everything is nothing but a practical joke played by Vincent, however this is not revealed to the characters in time and once it is is to late to stop the conflict between everyone of them. By this point the movie has lost its novelty, the viewer quickly learns how events will unfold and thus it misses some fun. A discussion ends, a silence fills the place and you know that at any moment someone will let out a comment that will lead to a new argument with some of the characters that so far have avoided the fighting, indeed that's what happens. The acting remains solid and the movie is still entertaining but not surprising.
By the end every character is unhappy and everything seems to show that nothing will ever be the same between them, this is were the ending comes and from my point of view it badly hurts the rest of the movie. We see the birth of the baby which turns out to be a girls instead of a boy and the parents call their friends so they can meet the newborn, everyone is just as happy as always and it would appear that nothing happened during that dinner, their friendship will go on with no changes. I don't have anything against happy endings and I wouldn't have any problem with the movie if the conflict had been solved in other way, but it all happens so fast and with no explanation that it left me with the feeling that the writers and the director didn't gave much of a thought to this and just took the easy way out. The ending leaves everything we saw without any consequence and thus it takes all the significance of what could have been a better film.
Good acting, funny dialogs and a good script but all hurted by a bad ending, still it ain't a bad effort and you will have fun if You watch it, give it a chance if you have the time.
score 7/10
Pencho15 15 October 2012
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2689195/ |
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1-4-2021 18:07:10