Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Eric Toledano, Olivier Nakache
Starring: Simon Boubil, Camille Cottin, Louis Garrel, Pierre Lottin
The French filmmaking duo of Éric Toledano and Olivier Nakache have raked in millions at the French box office with films like The Intouchables, C'est la Vie! and The Specials. Their work leans heavily into sentimentality, often to an eye-rolling degree, and their films have been dogged by well-intended but patronising depictions of the disabled and people of colour. The pair's latest, Just an Illusion, is filled with sentimental nostalgia, but it is so well constructed that even its more saccharine moments feel well-earned.
Taking its title from the Imagination hit that opens the film, Just an Illusion is set in 1985. "Ugh, not more '80s nostalgia," you might exclaim in exasperation. But this is the Paris of 1985, a far cry from the glamorous American vision of the '80s that tends to dominate pop culture depictions of the decade. As someone who was nine years old in the Ireland of 1985, Toledano and Nakache's presentation of the time rang true for me, especially the mass unemployment aspect and the effect that phenomenon had on our fathers.
The film is centred on a North African Jewish family living in a high-rise complex in a suburb of the French capital. The central focus is 12-year-old Vincent (Simon Boublil, who looks like a young Jacob Tremblay's twin). Vincent is approaching his bar mitzvah, a celebration which his parents - Yves (Louis Garrel) and Sandrine (Camille Cottin) - are struggling to fund. Yves has been made redundant but is keeping this fact a secret from Vincent and his older teenage brother Arnaud (Alexis Rosenstiehl). Yves' unemployment, coupled with Sandrine's career aspirations (tired of being a secretary, she is taking a night course in "computers"), is putting a strain on their marriage, the former feeling emasculated by his wife's advancements and her flirtations with the complex's rugged caretaker Berger (Pierre Lottin).
Most of this goes over the young head of Vincent, who has his own worries. He is madly in love with a classmate, Anne-Karine (Jeanne Lamartine), who barely acknowledges his existence. He is struggling to learn the Torah verse for his upcoming bar mitzvah. And an x-rated video tape he and his friends have been passing around has awkwardly made its way to the home of his Rabbi after being hidden in a chess box.
Presented very much from a child's eye, Just an Illusion makes Vincent's insignificant struggles as weighty as those of his parents. There is nothing condescending or cutesy in this view of childhood, which helps us get behind Vincent's quest to woo Anne-Karine. This verisimilitude is greatly enhanced by the performance of Boublil, who convinces us that Vincent is carrying the weight of his little world on his narrow shoulders. It is no surprise that the always engaging Cottin and Garrel endear us to Sandrine and Yves. Theirs is a believable portrayal of a couple who are still in love yet have become distracted by external forces that threaten to ruin their relationship.
With its episodic structure, Just an Illusion plays like an entire season of The Wonder Years condensed to two hours. In fact there is one scene, in which Vincent asks his mother to explain his family's complicated ethnic background, that appears to have been lifted straight from an episode of that '90s show. As with The Wonder Years, Just an Illusion incorporates the wider turmoil of its era without losing sight of its central coming-of-age narrative. The storytelling hits a lot of expected beats, but they land nonetheless thanks to the film's sincerity. It's a lot like those "Best of the '80s" compilation CDs - it may feature the obvious hits, but as soon as you play them you remember just why they were hits. You'd have to be an unrepentant cynic to resist tapping your feet along to this crowd-pleasing drama.
Just an Illusion is in UK/ROI cinemas from September 11th.
