A woman of quality, Jeanne (Blanche Gardin) acts for the good of others. She made it a rule of life and her profession by becoming an engineer at the service of the planet. She is about to know her hour of glory thanks to a revolutionary column of recovery and recycling of plastics intended for the oceans of which she is the designer. D-Day has arrived, the event, followed by televisions and onlookers: the column is finally installed. She stands up in the air, to applause, then, two or three blinks later, collapses. Joan too. The first will not recover. The second will take time.
The tone is set, the film launched – which will follow Jeanne’s depression by infusing it with a good dose of humor. Better, after all, to laugh than to cry. Such, in any case, is the course chosen by director Céline Devaux with this first feature film, both comical and grating, about the human, all too human malaise of a young woman of today, an idealist bit desperate and nevertheless warlike, suddenly overwhelmed by an existential crisis.
In a nutshell: Jeanne is fed up. She wants to throw everything away, quits her job and Paris, leaves for Lisbon where, she thinks, it’s time to empty the apartment of her mother, who died a year ago. Far from everyone, alone in a city she knows well, she hopes to be able to climb the slope.
little inner voice
And, above all, silence that little inner voice that constantly urges him to behave well. You can see that good conscience! Who comes to spoil his life, intervenes to lecture him or make fun of him. There is no escaping it as it is embedded, in the literal sense of the term, taking the form of a small hairy ghost, whose interventions give rise, throughout the film, to brief animated sequences.
It will be understood, Everyone loves Jeanne likes to mix genres, to marry fantasy and seriousness. The director has the gift of balance, who knows how to rock her story, hold her characters on one foot to the point that we ourselves no longer know which to dance to.
Uncertainty is enjoyable, devilishly cultivated by Blanche Gardin and Laurent Lafitte, who find here a dream field, designed for them, enough to build an irresistible duo. Because, in Lisbon, Jeanne will meet Jean, who will stick to her coattails. She is depressed and refuses to admit it. He is a former depressive assumed and anxious to help.
Although, at the time of their fortuitous meeting in an airport, the evidence does not jump to the eyes, these two are made for getting along. The film will apply, at least, to lead them there on a slightly discordant pas de deux, which makes all the flavor of this (sentimental) comedy.