Movie Review: A Difficult Year

 Movie Number 29 of 2024

The movie: A Difficult Year (Une Annee Difficile)

The Cinema: Palace Kino Cinemas, Collins Street

Stars: 3

Note to myself. Don't go and see a film the day after you get off a red-eye flight. It's asking for trouble. 

Making it even harder, this is a French Comedy. So over-tired and a little fractious went along to this - and promptly fell asleep, more because I'm over-tired rather than bored. But any chance to put in the Babel Fish** and listen to native French speakers is a good thing. And the film was enjoyable enough, even it was a bit strange in places. 

In my defense, I was taking micro-naps in the first third of the film, where things were getting set up. We meet Albert (Pio Marmai) who works at the airport, is deeply in debt and it grifting to get things back on track. The airport allows him all sorts of benefits, normally involving the moving on of lost and confiscated property. Albert also does some of those AirTasker jobs nobody else wants, including going to Black Friday sales. At the start of the movie, we learn two other things. Firstly, he's doing a job for somebody and secondly, there's a group that looks a lot like Extinction Rebellion over here raising merry hell around Paris. The leader of this group, "Cactus" (Noemi Merlant) is a bit of a bad ass. 

When Albert goes to drop off the loot from his AirTasker job he finds Bruno (Jonathan Cohen) in the pit of despair. He too is in financial dire straits. Bruno is trying to get some help from a financial adviser, Henri (Mathieu Almaric) who is well on the dodgy side. 

Bruno and Albert end up infiltrating the fringe group, mostly to ensure they get fed, but also, they appear to like being a part of the community of slightly strange people. 

I have to say, the French know how to hold a protest. A lot of the movie shows the antics of the group, which insist that their members go by benign monikers and get up to all sorts of stuff - as I said, not too far off the radical Extinction Rebellion group over here. The group are the source of a few laughs. 

This is not the film to see when you're overtired. I think, with a bit more sleep I would have enjoyed it more, but it came across as rather convoluted. The second half was definitely better than the first. 

Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano wrote and directed this - and a lot of it does have merit. I particularly liked the last few minutes which showed Paris during lockdown. The duo was responsible for The Intouchables - one of the best French films ever made. This film lacks the same pizzaz, but it does have some of the characteristic human elements found in their better-known film. 

I'm chalking this one up to being over-tired and probably napping through some important bits, which would have made the film easier to follow (although Jay did say she struggled with plot continuity at times. It was nice to listen to the French Language and see Paris again too. 

** Go read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It will explain everything.  

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