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Hunting and Gathering review
:. Director: Claude Berri
:. Starring: Audrey Tautou, Guillaume Canet
:. Running Time: 1:37
:. Year: 2007
:. Country: France
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Hunting and Gathering is another overly Americanized French romantic comedy that, fortunately, is saved by good performances and a sarcastic script. Unfortunately, it looks as though Friends has influenced the Gaullist comedy in many, many ways.
In Hunting and Gathering we meet Camille (Audrey Tatou), an anorexic (literally starving) artist who works as a cleaning lady to piss off her mother; Franck (Guillaume Canet), a gruff, rude, womanizing chef who works all week and spends his free day visiting his grandmother outside of Paris; Paulette (Françoise Bertin), the grandmother in question who would prefer to live out her life at home but instead finds herself cooped up in a rehabilitation/nursing home; and Philibert (Laurent Stocker) a penniless aristocrat with a severe stuttering problem and a heart of gold. All four eventually do end up living together in the grandiose apartment Philibert inherited from his grandmother-at least until it's sold, that is.
Other threads complete the story: from a sideswipe at a French inheritance tax which doesn't allow beneficiaries to do much more than sell in order to survive, to a new generation of workers without much in the way of opportunities. This is the new France. Of course, they bemoan their fate with self-indulgence that's quite funny at times.
But all of the quirkiness and sarcasm of the film don't squash the fact that this is a traditional story of a woman who must be saved. From their initial hatred of each other it's obvious that Franck and Camille are destined to be together. She is literally carried into the apartment by Philibert from her squalid studio as he helps her fight a cold. Later on it's Franck who carries her off into the back kitchen to impregnate her which, after all, is what she wants most. The flicker in Tautou's eyes shows a different strength, but like Friends, a sugary ending takes over. Mercifully we were spared the wedding scenes...
An affable film where director Berri brings out his stable of actors to the limited pastures of the feel-good comedy, you can't help but pine for the melancholy of his previous films.
Anji Milanovic
 French Movies: Reviews 2012 - present
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