Frenchmen

Four friends in their forties have been together for years and go to the mountains for a few days every year. Alain is married and looks comfortable, Jeff is cheating on his wife, Antoine is on the edge of a divorce, and Manu has not recovered since his brother died. The film follows the four across a year: in houses, in cars, in restaurants and on walking paths. Marc Esposito directs in his first film. The cast includes Bernard Campan, Gérard Darmon, Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Marc Lavoine. The subject is friendship between men, and the film takes it on without mockery. Most of the scenes are talk; the four discuss women, money, death and getting older, and there is almost no plot. Esposito edited a film magazine for years and made his first film in his forties; the material is clearly personal. The film's choice is to defend its characters. Jeff's infidelity is not presented as a crime and the narrative gives him room too; that stance was argued over in France and some critics found the film too much a men's view. It was an unexpected commercial success in France and two sequels followed. The women stand at the edge of the narrative, which is the film's clearest limit. Who it is for: viewers who like French films about friendship and drama about middle age. Who it is not for: nothing happens, it runs long, and nothing is seen outside the point of view of the four.