Alice Pol

  • Supercondriaque (2014)

    Supercondriaque (2014)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2021) Writer-director Danny Boon has been establishing himself as one of France’s leading film comedy powerhouses since the 2008 breakout hit Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis. Supercondriaque is one of the six films he has led as a filmmaker since then—all broad, big-budgeted (by French standards) comedies aiming at a large public and featuring Boon in leading roles. They’re not that different from the mainstream of Hollywood comedies—clear high-concept premise, formula-tested development, big finale, safe themes and fun for all. In Supercondriaque, we have Boon as an exceptionally hypochondriac man pushed by his exasperated doctor to take back control of his life and get over his imaginary ailments. The big push, after a rather lengthy forty-some minutes of throat-clearing, comes when his uncanny resemblance to a foreign freedom fighter leads to outrageous mistaken-identity romantic and political adventures designed to push his limits. You can guess that it ends on a very funny sequence in which he laughs at unimaginable filth—it’s rather funny to see him bond with a rat. The pacing is generally breezy once it gets going, although Boon and co-star Kad Merad can’t quite avoid some mugging for the camera. Two-time Boon collaborator Alice Pol (she also shows up in the subsequent Raid Dingue) is cute in a less overly comic role, with some good supporting work from a variety of other actors. Supercondriaque is not refined filmmaking, but it’s handled with competence and energy. The gags in the film’s last half get desperate at times (there’s an entire stream of jokes about Victor Hugo’s characters that gets to be a bit much) but that’s in keeping with the increasing frantic nature of the film. For Anglophone audiences looking in tackling recent French comedy, this is not a bad choice—the essential Frenchness of the result isn’t too pronounced and Boon’s lunacy translates well.

  • Raid dingue (2016)

    Raid dingue (2016)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On TV, July 2020) The big-budget segment of French cinema is equally capable of matching Hollywood when it comes to crowd-pleasing crime comedies, and that’s the spirit in which Raid dingue begs to be seen. It’s not meant to be anything but an action comedy, with a heavy emphasis on the comedy. Written and directed by well-known French filmmaker Danny Boon, this is a film about a well-meaning but clumsy woman trying for France’s elite RAID squad (the equivalent of the FBI’s SWAT). There is a criminal gang to provide a true antagonist, a rather annoying sexist subplot to provide romantic tension, and a few montages to show the protagonist going from zero to hero. Alice Pol has a great blend of comic timing and candid attractiveness as the heroine, while Boon gets a plum role for himself as the love interest. The structure of the film will be intensely familiar to anyone who’s seen a handful of Hollywood comedies, but it’s the journey that counts. Here, the results are uneven: While Raid dingue would have been strong enough on its own with a well-meaning heroine, insisting on sexism distracts from the heroine’s own merits. Her clumsiness also seems overdone to the point of being hardly forgivable when it leads to injuries and national peril. Some of this lack of script polish can be blamed on slightly different cultural expectations, but it does damage the film on the way to its conclusion. Still, Raid dingue is an easy watch and a good showcase for Pol. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of mainstream filmmaking in French.