Mr. Know-It-All

Vincent Barteau is thirty five, divorced, and coaches football at a small club. One day his thirteen year old nephew Léo is left with him. Léo is autistic, with Asperger syndrome, and works through numbers, rules and repetition. Vincent has no idea what to do with him. Then he notices that Léo can calculate the angles of a goalkeeper's position. François Prévôt-Leygonie and Stéphan Archinard direct. Arnaud Ducret plays Vincent and Max Baissette de Malglaive plays Léo. The source is Alain Gillot's 2015 novel La Surface de réparation. The tone is comic and autism is not made the joke; the humour comes from Vincent's incompetence, and the boy is the side of the narrative taken seriously. The young actor watched Rain Man while preparing and met a young woman with Asperger syndrome. The shape is familiar: a reluctant adult, a difficult child, and the two changing each other. The film does not leave it and does not try to. The football sections work as the story's shared language; Léo understands the game as a system, and Vincent notices for the first time that somebody is teaching him something. It opened on 9 May 2018. Who it is for: viewers who like French family comedy and warm films about neurological difference. Who it is not for: the shape is entirely predictable, the emotional pitch is high, and some resolutions come too easily.