There is a difference between a slight film and one that is inconsequential, and thankfully for My Friends, My Loves it manages to just fall on the side of the former. Lorraine’s Levy’s domestic comedy isn’t particularly well paced, or blessed with a cumulative structure, but it has a tinge of French farce to offset the always looming melodrama. In a way it’s the opposite of so many American comedies, which are ruthlessly schematic but without a scrap of emotional depth. Here there’s an engaging sense of character on offer, but only a loose storyline.
The film’s stylised setting is the London suburb of South Kensington, where a rustic French enclave has its own shops, brasseries and even a school; French is the first language and only incidental characters offer up words in English. You may suspect that it’s about as realistic as Amelie’s depiction of Paris, but the pan-European setting does serve to remind that these are characters looking to forge new structures in their lives.
Mathias (Vincent Lindon) manages to get himself fired from his job in a Parisian bookstore in the movie’s opening scene – he publicly berates a customer for his lack of manners, making his own contrary nature clear – and decides to follow his young daughter to London, where she lives with his former partner. He moves in next to his best friend, architect and single father Antoine (Pascal Elbe), and soon has custody of his child; some impromptu sledgehammer work on their party wall and they’re reformatted as a dysfunctional family.
The concept is played for laughs, with an Odd Couple dynamic between the fussy Antoine and the wayward Mathias. But their domestic entanglement never overshadows their relationships – they’re good fathers and lousy prospective partners. Antoine is overly dedicated to child and career, to the point where local florist Sophie (Florence Foresti) is virtually offering herself to him in vain.
Mathias, in contrast, is full of passion. Vincent Lindon has a worn face – at one point it’s rightly compared to a bloodhound’s – that conveys a sense of a life lived for better or worse. It means he can sweep visiting French television reporter Audrey (Virginie Ledoyen) off her feet, which is really a necessity since it’s not clear what rational reasons she may have for reciprocating his advances. Ledoyen’s performance, which begins with the director’s fascination with her shapely legs and never gets the chance to be fully rounded, is the film’s fulcrum: everything else moves around her as she works an underwritten character with offhand charm.
When Mathias finally brings Audrey to the share house, which is dominated by Antoine’s detailed rules, she is interrogated by the best friend and the two adolescents. It’s a gently daft version of that old standby of a scene, where a suitor is sternly met by the family for the first time. You’re left with the impression that what constitutes a family in the current times is simply whatever genuinely works, but My Friends, My Loves isn’t interested in explicitly making that point. It’s a scrappy, blithely pleasing film that matches the mood of the jazzy, conversational soundtrack.
