Mes héros (2012)
Directed by Éric Besnard

Film Review

Ordinarily, the reunion of Gérard Jugnot and Josiane Balasko, two members of the popular comedy troupe Le Splendid that first found fame in the 1970s, would be cause for celebration.  But to find these two great comic performers mugging their way through a third rate comedy that is merely content to rake over old clichés is hardly that - more a cause for lamentation.  Director Éric Besnard had a hit with his 2008 thriller Cash, which, despite its ludicrous excesses, at least had the essential spark of originality about it.  His follow-up film Mes héros is anything but original, and it certainly doesn't have much substance to it - just a lazily thrown together family reconciliation comedy that has as much feeling as a rain-soaked block of granite.

The film commits many sins but the most unpardonable of these is the cynical way it works into the vacuous narrative one of the most important social concerns in France today - namely France's treatment of illegal immigrants (which has a worrying resonance with the way the country dealt with Jews during the Second World War).  A small African boy due to be deported to his country of origin is casually tossed into the narrative and has nothing to do other than to act as a feeble plot device.  Not even the slightest attempt is made to give the unfortunate child an identity - he is just a mute symbol of France's ambivalence towards illegal immigrants.  It's sickening to see such a serious issue dealt with in such an offhand manner.

Even if the film hadn't committed this facile political faux pas it would still be pretty unwatchable.  The script is so awful that not one member of the cast comes off well.  Balasko is her usual shouty self and, when she is not hurling crockery at everyone, she looks as self-consciously dowdy as ever.  Jugnot likewise seems to have given up trying to be a serious actor; he just allows himself to be pulled through this gutless trash like a stray piece of metal drawn towards a magnet.  Clovis Cornillac exudes sincerity less readily than a block of granite drips haemoglobin and his deadweight presence turns a merely bad film into one that is excruciating to watch.  And then there is Pierre Richard, randomly thrown in just to make up the numbers - there seems to be no other reason why he is here, other than to add yet another grotesquely ill-conceived comedy to his increasingly flaky filomgraphy.  Mes héros is so bad that it actually hurts to watch it.

Film Synopsis

Maxime is willing to sacrifice everything, even his family, to ensure that he can make a success of his ambulance business.  But when he learns that his sexegenarian mother Olga has been taken into police custody after a violent altercation, he drops everything and comes to her aid.  Apparently Olga has no need of Maxime's help, or his sympathy, but she allows him to drive her back to her husband, Jacques, even though they have fallen out.  On the way, they pick up the son of an illegal African immigrant, in the hope of preventing his deportation.  Over the eventful few days that follow, Maxime begins to see another side to his parents and discovers what family life really means...