TO BED WITH SARTRE
Type: melodrama of the absurd
Director: Samuel Benchetrit. With François Damiens, Vanessa Paradis, Ramzy Bedia, Gustave Kervern, Joey Starr, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi
Vanessa Paradis and Gustave Kervern in “Sleeping with Sartre”
Omnia vincit amor, love conquers all. But where to find this blessed love? Especially if you’re the underling of a boss who uses only the quick way to solve the boss’s problems. This is what the new film by Samuel Benchetrit tells us, with a nice dose of nice madness, which he had already conquered us with the equally surprising The condo of broken hearts.
Here there is a gangster who wants to learn how to write poetry to woo a cashier to whom, however, he does not have the courage to make them read and uses a lieutenant as a postman. Then he sends another of his henchmen to recover the stolen money but he gets conquered by the thief’s wife and gets involved in the theater show where she plays Simone de Beauvoir, even transforming herself into Sartre. While two others are in charge of “selecting” the guests who should attend the complexed daughter’s birthday party.
Filmed in a Kaurismaki-esque style, among characters who are unable to find themselves tender and helpless, the film slowly shifts into the gears of a comedy of the absurd in which love ends up triumphing where and how you least expect it. Even for Bruni Tedeschi, his silent wife eternally in front of the TV.
A scene from the film “Sleeping with Sartre”
For those who know how to seek the tenderness of the heart where you least expect it.
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