Waiting for Bojangles

A French drama. Georges and Camille meet on a holiday. She lives by a logic of her own: a different name every day, no regard for rules, and everyone around her drawn into her game. They marry and have a son. The house is arranged like a performance: music always playing, dancing, a bird loose in the rooms, and bills never opened. The boy takes this for normal. In one section the narrative runs through his eyes and he sees it as a fairy tale. Then it changes. Camille's behaviour stops being amusing; her decisions become dangerous, the money runs out and people intervene. An institution steps in and she is taken into treatment. From there the film is an escape. Father and son take her out and go to a house in Spain. There they try to keep the old life going. What the narrative is interested in is not illness but loyalty: the man does not try to cure his wife, he chooses to keep pace with her, and his son pays for it. The tone is deliberately bright; the colours are vivid, the music constant, and the tragedy moves along underneath that cheer. The source is a novel by Olivier Bourdeaut. Virginie Efira plays Camille and Romain Duris plays Georges. Grégory Gadebois is in the cast. Régis Roinsard directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes French drama with a bright surface. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by mental illness being made beautiful; the film stands in a romantic place about it.