Michel Blanc is as fine a triple-threat (writer-director-actor) as any currently working in French cinema but although offered the chance to direct this title he contented himself with adapting the English novel and playing the lead role. As it happens he is joined by some fine French actors from veterans like Miou-Miou to a younger generation in the shape of Melanie Doutey and Gilles Lellouche. There is, of course, nothing new in our old friend the dysfunctional family but in the hands of these actors it is painless. Blanc, of course, is the patriarch, newly retired and building an extension to his already impressive property. Being a full-time hypochondriac he blows a spot on his back into a life-threatening cancer despite medical assurance that there is nothing wrong with him and his preoccupation, not to say obsession, renders him more or less oblivious to long-time wife Miou-Miou's affair with a family friend, his son's anguish about his gay relationship and his divorced daughter (Melanie Doutey's) less than ideal chance of a second husband, Gilles Lellouche who is one baguette short of a croc monsieur. Like all feelgood movies it comes out all right in the end and for us, the audience, it provides a pleasant couple of hours.
Review of Une petite zone de turbulences
