Stéphane leaves the basque Country, where he is conservator for South Korea.
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20 July 2020
Updated on July 24, 2020 at 4h17
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#jesuislà: love in The time of social media ** 1/2
Eric Moreault
The Sun
CRITICAL / It was 238 years ago, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos published the famous novel The dangerous liaisons, composed of 175 letters. Other times, other customs : in #jesuislà, Stéphane has a match with a South Korean by Instagram. But the narrative belongs to the same kind of illusion, that of a love fantasy…
The Stéphane in question, played by Alain Chabat, is a restaurateur without a history, who has inherited his father’s establishment in the basque Country. His life unfolds like a long quiet river, with his two adult sons. Until he starts to seek a thrill on the social networks.
This will take the form of Soo (Doona Bae), a young painter who embodies the exoticism and adventure. Stéphane decides on a whim to fly out to Seoul to meet her. #jesuislà, he wrote to his arrival. But the beautiful has made him a false hope…
By idleness, but also with the mad hope that she will, it publishes photos of him “camping” at the airport for… 11 days !
Eric Lartigau (The family Bélier) is a nice exercise of imagination in its staging and Shabat will give heart to joy, the second act quickly vanishes in the repetition. His reflection on the interference of social networks with our lives remains superficial. Everyone knows that you can be anyone online, invent an avatar, more or less distant from reality.
This bitter-sweet comedy will however be a new breath in the third act when our fifty-year-old, all naive innocent that he is, finally decides to get out of the airport. An action that allows him to begin to reinvent itself and brings the story on other territory, that of the relations father-son, in a register rather agreed.
Unfortunately, the film also pushes in the pictures where he explores South Korea. Look on a different culture far from his own — still remains a delicate exercise and difficult. One would have expected better of a scenario that has worked the talented Thomas Bidegain. Especially that it has proven more than once his sensitivity to the issue (A prophet, Dheepan, The cowboys).
Soo (Doona Bae) is not the one that hoped to Stéphane…
AZ Movies
In and of itself, #jesuislà wants to be an entertainment friendly, worn by Alain Chabat credible lover chilled to the bone. The film relies a lot on his shoulders and he sometimes has a tendency to butter a little thicker. It is lightweight, not transcendent, and when even abracadabrant.
However, it has the merit to offer us a real change of scenery. It is to dream and to travel on the cheap…
The generic
Rating : ** 1/2
Title : #jesuislà
Genre : Comedy, drama
Director : Éric Lartigau
Actors : Alain Chabat, Doona Bae
Duration : 1h38
