Travaux, on sait quand ça commence... (2005)
Directed by Brigitte Roüan

Film Review

Actress-turned-director Brigitte Roüan's fourth full-length film is one of those odd French auteur patchwork pieces that practically defies categorisation and manages to rope in so many genres that you hardly know what to make of it. Part social drama, part song and dance musical, part farce, part fantasy, it's a film that breaks all the rules and which you know can't possibly work - yet, remarkably, it does.  Anarchically unpredictable, at times poignant, most often outrageously funny, it's a deliciously mad potpourri of a film that somehow reflects today's busy, chaotic, fragmented world.

Crazy though the film is, it does manage to broach some of the most pressing social issues in France today (immigration and racial integration), and does so with seriousness and genuine feeling.  Whilst Roüan's eccentric directorial style may not be to all tastes, it's hard to imagine how anyone could not warm to Carole Bouquet's tour-de-force performance as an idealistic lawyer who switches between Mary-Poppins-style optimism and abject despair as her life - and her apartment - comes crashing down around her.  If you're not turned off by flying teapots and cartwheeling lawyers, here's a film that will both surprise you and charm you - a refreshingly liberated view of the way we live now. After this, you are well-equipped to tackle some of Roüan's more challenging films, including the equally idiosyncratic Post coïtum animal triste (1997).

Film Synopsis

Chantal Letellier is a successful lawyer who is never known to lose a case if she can help it.  Always willing to champion the underdog, she has gained a reputation for defending the rights of marginals and immigrants.  If only her private life were half as successful...  Since her reasonably civilised divorce, she hasn't had the time or the inclination to make a go of her love life, and whenever she finds a man she likes she soon wishes she hadn't bothered.  Chantal's latest admirer is Franckie, the kind of man she likes least.  Obsessively in love with her, he clings to her like a Velcro-covered limpet, and Chantal has now reached the point where she will do anything, other than resort to murder, to get rid of him.

By exercising her reasonably well-endowed intellect, Chantal finally comes up with what she thinks is the perfect solution to her problems.  She will make her apartment uninhabitable for the next few weeks by undertaking an extensive refurbishment.  Not only will this be bound to dampen Franckie's ardour and hopefully drive him away, it will also allow Chantal to salve her social conscience, because she intends employing illegal immigrants to do all the building work.  It isn't long before it dawns on her that she has made a terrible mistake.  Within days, her beautiful apartment is starting to look less like a living space and more like a miniature war zone...