Romance revisted: Thierry Lhermitte and Sabine Azéma. Photo / Supplied
Romance revisted: Thierry Lhermitte and Sabine Azéma. Photo / Supplied
Review by Sarah Watt
Sarah reviewed for the Sunday Star Times until 2019. After a career change to secondary school teaching, she now she works in alternative education with our most disadvantaged rangatahi.
Riviera Revenge, directed by Ivan Calbérac, is in cinemas now.
How would you react if, after a half-century of happy marriage and moderately satisfying parenting, you discovered your spouse had had a passionate affair ... 40 years ago?
That’s the premise of this delightful French romcom, the original title ofwhich was “Never confess”. It’s a classic tale of secrets and malentendus played with great wit and terrific performances.
When retired general and controlling patriarch François (André Dussollier, The Crime is Mine) finds a love letter in which another man praises his wife Annie’s “glowing breasts”, his answer is to go on a revenge trail to Nice, where the perpetrator still lives, to “smash Boris’s face in”.
With appalled Annie (Sabine Azéma) in tow, ostensibly so she can correctly identify the now-elderly gentleman, the septuagenarian couple head south on a misadventure that will either make or break their long commitment.
With his military past, François treats his retribution as a commando mission, conscripting his favourite army son to assist. Meanwhile Annie seeks solace from their intellectual, liberal other children.
Boris (The Dinner Game’s Thierry Lhermitte), on the other hand, lives a guilt-free, idle existence among Tibetan prayer flags and antiquities in his inherited home.
It’s not all played for laughs. When François catches Annie reading Madame Bovary, she says, “One has to read Flaubert! It’s marvellous!” about the story of a housewife inspired to have an affair by the books she read. Meanwhile, François despairs over his childless daughter and his son, a puppeteer (sorry, professional marionettist), but now has to learn some lessons about emotional openness.
Dussollier’s stern patriarch evokes his bad-guy roles, as in 36 Quai des Orfèvres, but he’s also a wonderful comic actor. With some unexpectedly heavy home truths in a script full of zingers, Riviera Revenge turns a few cultural clichés on their heads and provides plenty of laughs.
