The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

I've just finished watching this for the second time as it overwhelmed me emotionally the first time and I had to check if it was just the wine.

Well, it wasn't.

It's a marvellous film - beautifully crafted, played by a cast of quality actors, great soundtrack.

Watching this film reminded me of why we need the French film industry. Today I saw Toy Story 3 (not a bad instalment in the franchise, but nothing special) with my 9-year old daughter and as we came out of the auditorium, I looked around and saw ads for (1) an animated dog flick for kids, (2) a standard "blockbuster" CGI-fest, all shot in blue and (3) a loads-of-explosions bog standard actioner. Why is no-one making films about reality anymore? Are the lives of real people no longer worth considering? Why is Hollywood producing such a deluge of crap these days?

La Premier Jour de la Reste de ma Vie tells the story of a family by way of a few individual days over the course of c15 years. Don't expect any contrived pivotal moments of misunderstanding - this film is above that. It shows the conflicts between family members and the frustration and bitterness, yet attempts to demonstrate how these rifts came about. It also shows how people learn from the failures of their parents and how they try not to repeat them. Look up the poem "This be the Lesson" by Philip Larkin for how important this is...

It is also about love, the bonds of family, redemption, nostalgia and if the final scene doesn't have tears pissing from your eyes, then you have no heart.

Yes, and I thought to what I wrote ! When I saw this film, it was the first time that all of the characters made me share their emotions and laughs. Amazing !

A very nice film, treated well.

I particularly love the way of filming. It's also the first time I saw such a devotion to one film. Really interesting. The audio fits perfectly with the film.

The problem, as you surely know it, is "the family". Every character is perfect in his or her role, and no one can doubt about that !

Three words : buy and see !

I must say I've seen a lot of movies but rarely I feel so much drawn into this kind of stories. Believe me, it's a sign of a good movie!

I immediately saw great camera angles and this follows the film throughout. I love the movement of the camera, following the story acted out by good actors in a script that is funny and well written. On top of that, the film has a great musical score.

We go right into what is an average French family. Man and wife and two grown up kids. Time to have a life crisis or four. Mum and dad is no longer having sex, the daughter feels estranged and the son procrastinating. More shouldn't be told, though it's an everyday story from a French middle class family.

The film is funny, still it's able to balance into both sentimentality as swell as sadness. Typically French, but in a good way. The latter years I think the French film industry has turned out a lot of great films, and again French film is something you awaits the best from. This is another example of such a film. Well done!

Yes we've already watched this kind of movie... Yes the different "life issues" and/or "family issues" that are exposed are quite classic...

But I really enjoyed watching this movie. The actors and actresses are very good, the musical atmosphere is great too, and the situations or dialogs made me laughed quite often.

It's a typical french movie, describing the different parts of a human life, from first life experiments to "old age" crises. The love that exists in the family looks real, pure, and is stronger than all the ordeals the different family members will encounter.

A real sweet time I had by watching this movie, you can go!

I found this French film from the writer/director Ŕemi Beanc̗on intriguing. The first quarter of the film initially engaged the professional me; that part that is a child and adolescent psychologist; with an impressionistic overlay of happily narcissistic and negligent parenting and spends the rest of the film unfolding the effect of this on the three children and even in a somewhat family therapy and Lacanian way showing how this bad habit of self absorption can be traced back three generations. However, I don't want to make the film sound heavy or preachy. It remains light and real and the only heaviness is the dramatically impactful incidents which evolve from these well sketched dynamics. Besides, the musical me was delighted by a perfect scene from the late 70's which had me reflecting that I had not played air guitar with quite such élan and enthusiasm since exactly that time. Also note the plot line that follows one of the male brothers frustrating failure to follow through on a truly kismetic introduced love interest. Superb, light but deep film about what carelessly inattentive parenting can do to all those (or that's the joke isn't it? – uninvolved with the result). Depths left unexplored in The Movie Show. Four stars from me. Beautiful.