ScreenWize

The French title of this film, taken from the long novel from which it is adapted is Ensemble, c’est tout and I much prefer the producer’s choice for the Finish translation Kimpassa, which simply means ‘together,’ rather than the strangely enigmatic Hunting and Gathering. The film is all about togetherness, gently exploring how you will inevitably make friends and even perhaps become lovers if you live a little, eat, drink, argue and listen together. It’s the daily communal things of life – the cooking and the cleaning that have replaced the hunting and gathering of our ancestors – that keep us together.

Anna Gavalda’s novel has been adapted and directed by one of France’s most respected filmmakers, Claude Berri, himself an actor who has won many awards over the years for his work including the two beautiful Jean de Florette films. Here he has a wonderfully sensitive cast behind the central four characters of the story – Camille (Audrey Tatou), Franck (Guillaume Canet), Philibert (Laurent Stocker) and Paulette (Francoise Bertin), and it’s their delicate ensemble work that makes this film really worth watching.

Camille is a cleaner with an eating disorder who is rescued by Philibert, a good-natured aristocrat with a speech impediment. He shares his huge apartment with Franck, a grumpy womanizing chef who spends his only day off looking after Paulette, his grandmother. Slowly, very slowly, the four characters are drawn together and the accumulative effect of time spent in the in-between hours of life, causes them to connect and grow and change . Tatou plays the complex and brittle Camille with a glowing introverted grace and is nicely balanced by the two male leads who wear their hearts much more on their sleeves.

There’s a dull patch in the story two-thirds of the way through when the friendships are teetering on the edge of intimacy and no-one is sure what to do (including the director), because triangles are so awkward for our coupling society. There are also some unexplained developments that occur because it just wasn’t possible to condense the novel’s expansive narrative for the screen. But it’s a real charmer, tender and careful with its people, straightforward with its camera work and buoyed by its whimsical musical score.

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Filed Under: Reviews by Simon