Arrête de pleurer Pénélope (2012)
Directed by Juliette Arnaud, Corinne Puget

Film Review

In 2002, the acting triumvirate Corinne Puget, Christine Anglio and Juliette Arnaud had a huge hit on their hands with their stage play Arrête de pleurer Pénélope.  The play ran for over seven hundred performances in Paris and was followed by sequel, Arrête de pleurer Pénélope 2, which was a comparable success.  Ten years after they wrote their first play, Puget, Anglio and Arnaud hoped to repeat its success with this big screen follow-up, but the result is nothing lss than a total failure.  It's a familiar recipe.  Take a banal storyline, marinate it in a sauce of stale clichés and truly awful jokes, dispense with unnecessary characterisation, et voilà, another prize turkey to serve up in front of an undiscerning audience.  The three amiable leads do their best to crank some life into this turgid corpse of a comedy, but having no obvious talent for directing and visibly struggling for ideas, all they end up doing is digging themselves a shallow grave.  It's as painful to watch as someone repeatedly hitting himself on the head with a shovel, and about as funny.

Film Synopsis

Chloé, Léonie and Pénélope are three friends who haven't seen each other for years.  When they finally do meet up again, it is in a solicitor's office.  It appears that Chloé's aunt has died and left them in her will a house in the country.  Delighted by this unexpected stroke of good fortune, the three friends decide that they will spend the weekend in the house.  That will give them enough time to clear it out and get it ready so they can sell it.  But as soon as they set foot in the house they experience a sudden rush of nostalgia.  How many happy hours they spent there with Chloé's aunt when they were children...  It will turn out to be a very emotional weekend.