Mine de rien

The expression "mine de rien " ,in French ,means "you wouldn't think it to look at me/you/him/her/them " ; in the movie ,you would not think it to look at them, these people on the dole they are no dummies you (the mayoress) know. And it's a very good word game : the coal mine which closed in 1986 and its slag tips are to be dismantled and demolished ; so it gains another meaning :"nothing mine"

An enterprise ("Armaggedon ":what a well-chosen name!) which was supposed to hire long-lasting unemployed persons ,has just been relocated in a French region (which means losing your past, your friends , in a nutshell, your roots)

Living on the RSA (minimum payment given to those who are not entitled to the unemployment benefit),at odds with an aggressive mayoress flanked by her "bodyguards", two cops nicknamed Tic and Tac (from Disney's squirrels Chip and Dale),these underdogs take a rebel stand against the powers that be : they decide to convert the mine site into an amusement park .It's their "full monthly", their "calendar girls ", even though they don't strip .As their admirable motto -probably inspired by Saint-Exupéry's "le petit prince" - is :"the most beautiful resources are inside us" says , let's stand together ,hope for the best and damn with the authoritarian mayoress and the brilliant lawyer who wants to steal my children .

With a low budget ,in a 80 min movie, Mathias Meklus achieves the incredible feat of introducing a dozen of characters ,in the grand tradition of the glorious cinema de papa : there's Bernadette (a sensational Marianne Garcia ) ,lost in the training scheme for the unemployed to help them find work and in the bar-codes , accompanied with her mentally-retarded son , there's the old miner (played by wonderful Rufus ) who feels nostalgic and who never forgave one of his colleagues for having betrayed his social class (he became an engineer ), there's the local dealer, there's the old mom (the always reliable Helene Vincent ) who suffers from Alzheimer's disease and who carries with her everywhere she goes her husband's ashes in a cocoa powder box .

And there's the central character Arnault (Arnaud Ducret): if it were not for his mother -with-the-ashes in tug, it would be the most hackneyed cliché : the divorced man whose wife married again: the spouse, a lawyer luring his stepsons with his dough; but in the end, the screenwriters turn the loser a winner .

Because it's David vs Goliath :even though the amusement park is more DIY than the sophisticated attractions of Disney's parks ,with full-price tickets for the wealthy and reduced -priced ones for the poor, it's really a revolution in miniature .

And on the French feel-good scene where the songs in English are heard every fifteen minutes, make way for the old French tunes (including the moving Guichard /Ferrat's "mon vieux ", which brings back sweet memories to the mentally-ill mom!) Bravo!

Unfairly overlooked, despised by the intellectual TV magazines , "mine de rien" walks a fine line between comedy and drama and wins us over.