FAMILIES / Belles Familles

 

US Premiere • Comedy/Drama • France, 2015

DCP • 2.35 • Dolby 5.1 • Color • 113 min

Directed by: Jean-Paul Rappeneau

Written by: Jacques Fieschi, Philippe Le Guay, Jean-Paul Rappeneau, Julien Rappeneau

Cinematography: Thierry Arbogast

Film Editing: Véronique Lange

Original Score: Martin Rappeneau

Produced by: Laurent Pétin, Michèle Halberstadt (ARP Sélection)

Cast: Mathieu Amalric (Varenne), Marine Vacth (Louise), Gilles Lellouche (Grégoire Piaggi), Nicole Garcia (Suzanne Varenne), Karin Viard (Forence), Guillaume de Tonquedec (Jean-Michel Varenne), André Dussollier (Pierre Cotteret)

International Sales: TF1 International • tf1international.com

 

Mathieu Amalric leads a nimble comedic cast as Jérôme, a globetrotting businessman based in Shanghai, who makes a pit stop in Paris to introduce his business partner/fiancée to his mother. Jérôme’s estranged father has recently passed away, and when he learns that the sale of his family’s elegant Loire Valley manor is in bureaucratic limbo, he decides to send his fiancée on to London and take care of the matter personally. Upon arrival, Jérôme’s finds that his private memory lane is about to be paved over by the highway of progress. To begin with, the man threatening to lay his ancestral home to block-development waste is none other than Grégoire, an old rival from school. Then it dawns on him that for years his father had been managing an elaborate alternate life in the old place. But it’s Grégoire’s girlfriend Louise (Young and Beautiful revelation Marine Vacth) that really intrigues him. She dislikes him more than she should, for a man she just met.

When his big budget international espionage project hit a roadblock, veteran writer/director Jean-Paul Rappeneau took a detour that led him to a more autobiographical approach, and a return to the high-energy comedy of earlier films like Call Me Savage (1975 – COLCOA 2012). Known for his meticulous blocking and dynamic camera moves, the Rappeneau style reached its apex in lavish period productions Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) and The Horseman on the Roof (1995). Less known is the fact that Rappeneau is one of very few French writers to have been nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar (That Man From Rio, 1964). To help shape his latest screenplay, Rappeneau enlisted co-writers Philippe Le Guay (The Women on the 6th Floor, COLCOA 2011), and son Julien Rappeneau (My Way, COLCOA 2012). Julien’s brother Martin Rappeneau composed the film’s music, keeping Families in the family.

 

QUOTES:

“…as rich and layered as a gourmet mille-feuille.”

– Peter Debruge, Variety

“The film kicks off at top speed and never stops moving, with the 83-year-old Rappeneau zipping through scenes as if he were Usain Bolt adapting a classic vaudeville play by Georges Feydeau.”

– Jordan Mintzer, Hollywood Reporter