"Hunting and Gathering" is the penultimate film of Claude Berri, the last tycoon of French cinema. He passed away before completing his final project but I like to think of that one as the last one made under his full artistic supervision because it's a fitting ending to a rich body of work and the subject poetically closes an arc traced by his first feature film "The Old Man and the Child" with Michel Simon...
There truly is a poignant and satisfying feeling of full circle with the theme of people who overcome isolation and find a ray of sunshine in their lives through the presence of others. It's as simple as that but sometimes it's within the simplicity of moments such as people sharing a meal, a drink, a conversation that faith in happiness can be revived. The film might never leave a indelible impression, it's not on par with Claude Berri's celebrated works such as "So Long, Stooge", or "Jean de Florette/ Manon des Sources" but it does leave the viewer with with a little smile in your face and a great deal of satisfaction.
There are four protagonists, all wonderfully played by their respective actors, I did believe in each of them though I must admit I had a hard time sympathizing with Guillaume Canet's Franck who plays the bad boy with a golden heart. It's not his performance but rather the way he was perhaps the most "obvious" of all. He's a young chef who takes care of his grandmother Paulette (Françoise Bertin) a woman in her eighties and whose declining health put her in a retirement home, far from her little house, her garden and her cats. Oh I'm digressing, I was talking about Franck. The offspring of a failed union, left by both his parents and raised by Paulette, he built a defensive hard-to-get attitude to preserve himself from deception and drowns his bitterness in beer and one-night stands... life for his meals, love is one thing to make, not enjoy.
Franck isn't the only one with demons, there's Camille played by Audrey Tautou. She doesn't see eye to eye with her mother and works as a janitorial worker, she's anorexic, smokes a lot and lives in one of these studios in the top of Parisian buildings (called 'maid's rooms' die to their extreme coziness. She's got nerves, a dry sense of humor and doesn't strike as the girl who believes in a Charming Prince but she knows good person when she sees one. An office worker leaves some of his garbage outside the basket, she leaves a savage note on his office, a kindly neighbor, Philibert (Laurent Stocker) addresses her politely, she just invites him to a little improvised dinner in her room. Why? Maybe because unlike Franck, she can't force herself to believe that she can live without a good company every now and then. And unlike Franck, it's not sexual and somehow she felt that Philibert wouldn't think so either.
Philibert is a man with aristocratic background written all over his particle name, he has a stammer, wears a shapka and dresses like a dandy from the 50s, whatever made him the roommate of Franck might be the only "plot convenience" we could close our eyes on... Anyway, it all leads down to a night where Camille falls sick and Philibert takes her to her apartment, she needs a few day to recover and eventually meet Franck. Now. I still remember my initial feeling, I was so moved by the duo formed by Camille and Philibert that I felt like the film would lose its mindless charm if it had to surrender the something as formulaic as "boy meets girl - they hate each other - they fall in love" etc.
Well, it's a foregone conclusion that the two will fall in love but Berri's film doesn't care about clichés as much as it doesn't care about avoiding them . And no matter what, the film is less about two people who found love, than four people who found a certain state of grace once they opened their doors and therefore their hearts to each other... Philibert overcomes his handicap and pursue theater courses and finds love on stage... Paulette is hosted by her grandson and taken care of by Camille... and Camille and Franck, tease each other, resist the idea of falling in love to better throw themselves in. But again, love is less a plot device than a collateral healing.
We know that some facts of life will take their rights back but there's never a sense of major threat or some existential obstacle, it's just as if Berri knowing each film could be the last decided to free himself from that 'need of social relevance' like in his earlier movies ... We live in a world that is a constant temptation for isolation and cynicism and that the very director of "So Long, Stooge" with Coluche, could compose that hymn for togetherness can almost look utopian or naïve, but if such scenarios were that implausible, would the world really be worth to live?
Why couldn't an old woman die peacefully in the place she loved? Why would a man with a stutter not become an acclaimed comedian? Why wouldn't professional success be compatible with true love? In "The Old Man and the Sun", an old prejudiced man hid a little Jewish boy. He didn't know about his identity but it didn't matter, the kid became his best friend and the old man's soul was cleaned up. The stakes are lower in "Hunting and Gathering", no life-and-death situation, but the spirit is the same: maybe one of the key to happiness is to meet people who make us want to become better.
