LTO CRAZY LIFE
Type: geriatric-issue comedy
Director: Ann Sirot and Raphaël Balboni. With Jo Deseure, Jean Le Peltier, Lucie Debay, Gilles Remiche, Estelle Marion, Antoine Fallon, Marie Lecomte
From left, Jo Deseure, Jean Le Peltier and Lucie Debay in “The Crazy Life”.
Alex and Noémie have decided that the time has come to have a baby but suddenly they realize that they already have a “baby”: it is Alex’s sixty-year-old mother, an outgoing art gallery director who begins to act strangely. The diagnosis leaves no way out: “semantic dementia”, an elegant form to indicate a neurodegenerative disease that resembles Alzheimer’s.
AND from now on Alex’s problem (and consequently Noémie’s) is to keep this woman throwing a tantrum at bay, doesn’t know how to control his finances, doesn’t care about what the welfare institutions write and eats with the same ease as a greedy kid. Will it be enough to hire a willing young man to keep her at bay or will Noémie’s desire for motherhood pay the consequences?
A pair of Belgian directors here at their first feature film (after having collected many awards with their shorts), Sirot and Balboni tackle a complex and dramatic theme with a contagious levityready to see at least one smile in every situation, also ready to dismantle the traditional rules of the genre with a surprising direction (which takes advantage of the surprise of the frontal shots and the gaze into the camera).
For those looking for a little cute irreverence.
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