An eccentric Icelandic poetess and her son coming all the way from... Jamaica, a friendly crane operator working cheerfully at the top of the world, a laundromat that also serves as an Internet cafe, an otter in the main character's bathroom, you would think these are the words poem by Jacques Prévert or Charles Cros. They are in fact features of Solveig Anspach's offbeat sweetly loony little film, "Queen of Montreuil". One thing is sure, burlesque as they are, these incongruities will make you smile - more than once. But make no mistake, "Queen of Montreuil" isn't just a comedy, or let's say it is a bittersweet comedy, whose main subject is death (here the one, sudden, of Agathe's spouse) and its bitter aftermath, grief, mourning and the problematic return to life.
Death is indeed a theme present in most of Anspach's fiction works. And she did know her subject since she herself had been confronted to the Grim Reaper two decades before making this film. Suffering from breast cancer during her pregnancy, she overcame the disease and gave birth to her baby girl against all odds. In 2011, when she made "Queen of Montreuil", she didn't know it yet but she would eventually die of her cancer four years later following a relapse, not without having shot in between two singular and therefore engaging films "Lulu femme nue" and "L'Effet aquatique".
But if the shadow of Death is present in several of her films ("Haut les coeurs!", which tells about her own grappling with the Crab, "Queen of Montreuil", about the sudden death of a young life partner and the trauma it ensues), Sólveig Anspach never resorts to the violins of melodrama or to raw realism, let alone to Bergman's twisting-the-knife-in-the-wound style. On the contrary, she opts for a light and offbeat tone. Thus the poor heroine of this "serious comedy" (Florence Loiret-Caille, excellent) is confronted - as mentioned before - with a completely crazy Icelandic woman (the amazing Didda Jónsdóttir), her irresponsible son, a sea lion in her bathtub and a neighbor who is in love with her... Thanks to this clever choice, laughter alternates with tears, lightness with gravity, the tangy taste of life with the pasty taste of death, both suffered and desired. Rarely has one's heart been so light-hearted when faced with the evocation of a work of mourning.It is all the less surprising when one remembers that Sólveig Anspach had managed to make bearable and even endearing the spectacle of a woman suffering from breast cancer in "Haut les Coeurs".
Well, do not hesitate to enter the personal and endearing world of Sólveig Anspach: your heart will sink and at the same time you will laugh. Supreme elegance!
