Although I found this a brilliant film I also found myself thinking throughout why don't this couple go to arbitration, something they actually did at the end and of course the short answer is that had they done the obvious thing from the get-go we would have wound up with at best a two-reeler. I've never found myself in the position that the two protagonists share but the overwhelming impression is that millions of couples all over the world have and are. The two leading actors are simply outstanding and the real-life twins who play their twin daughters are not far behind. I first became aware of Berenice Bejo in the cod James Bond movie OSS 117: Cairo, Nest Of Spies, in which she played opposite Jean Dujardine long before they co-starred in The Artist and I always found her watchable and more than competent but here she really comes into her own and earns a place alongside the best actresses in French cinema from Isabelle Huppert on down. Renaissance man Cedric Kahn - Writer-Director-Actor is more than a match for her and together they lift a potentially depressing film to another level.
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writers_reign4 November 2016
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Megan_Shida7 April 2020So this is an indie movie. It isn't here to entertain you, it's aim is to illustrate life through art. You probably won't like the characters. You probably won't like that there is not a neat ending. This is tragedy explored through film. It is real and painful to watch, as a failed marriage often is. There is a scene where the friends of the ex-couple sit on, awkwardly, at a dinner party as cruel words and fighting breakout between the couple- and that is a good metaphor for the viewer's experience. It isn't pleasant, but it is real. This is life shown through art. And, in some ways, it feels a lot like what the recent and much talked about Marriage Story could have been, had that film been less permeated in the whimsical and humorous tone that made the film so palatable, despite the sad subject matter. I think this film shows a tragic part of life in a way that is important for the viewer to think about.
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maurice_yacowar5 February 2017The French title — L'economie du couple — catches the social relevance of the film better than the English version, which narrows to the couple's emotional state.
A divorcing couple is forced by finances to live together. This may be the most harrowing treatment of a crumbling marriage since Bergman's TV series and film, Scenes from a Marriage. The film opens in the heat of the couple's hatred. We fill in the background as the drama proceeds. It ends with the cold impersonal voice of a notary spelling out the terms of their final settlement.
The incompatibility is apparent. Marie has a job and for years has been carrying Boris, who is a capable builder/renovator but lacks self-discipline. Marie's mistake was to confuse desire with love. That's what leads to their one-night stand here, which fails to resolve the couple's tensions and antagonism.
Now their anger prevents each from understanding the other's position. The crux is economic: Boris can't afford to move out and Marie won't give him the half share of their apartment's selling price he demands.
The split ramifies beyond the family. Boris disrupts her dinner party with some mutual friends and bristles at a possible "suitor." He manipulates her mother into hiring him for a repair job against Marie's wishes.
But the twin daughters become their principal battleground. Because Boris keeps forgetting to buy the one girl's soccer boots, Marie finally buys them. When they're "lost" at their first game, Boris buys a replacement. Boris resents Marie's limits on his access to the girls, Marie the mishaps that occur in his care.
But there's another issue: class. This is what gives the film a broader scope than marital emotions turned martial. Rugged Boris is working class; Marie was born wealthy and elegant. Her social and economic advantage persists to the end. Even after reluctantly giving him half their home's selling price, she still will have the money from her father's bequest, her childhood home that Boris has been hired to repair.
That makes this psychological study of a splitting couple a reflection of a society — Belgium, France, Europe — that in this century remains as frozen and fragmented by a harsh class structure as it was two hundred years ago. The story of a breaking couple exposes a hatefully fractured social structure. -
searchanddestroy-113 August 2016This film is a rather realistic and also depressing drama. The true story and also accurate description of the daily trench war, domestic trench war between a man and a woman married since fifteen years and who see their couple fall apart like an iceberg in hot summer. It is highly depressing because it is so close to reality for many many folks. Some sequences are very disturbing, such as the one when the man comes inside the house, during the diner with his wife's friends...You have the feeling to watch real life events and people talk like in real life. I thought of another film also starring the outstanding Berenice Bejo: LE PASSE, released three years ago. The story was not really the same but the directing and acting were very similar.
Don't miss it. But not if you are with your wife or husband and you get through a major crisis. Because that would not make it. Choose BRICE DE NICE instead. -
johnpierrepatrick29 March 2020A divorce is never easy and such settings have been plainly used by movies in any countries. This movie however adresses a specific topic, as the matter is on separate maintenance, money and housing. Here, the focus is not the fight for the children, as almost always in such movies. This topic is addressed through a specific situation: if the couple separates after years of common life, they continue to cohabitate, because of the money issues the man has and because they couldn't find an agreement on the split.
I felt this movie had somehow two parts, one with the conflict between the former couple, the rising of tension, the dynamics. At that time, I would have given it a 8: well shot, well directed, we are faced with a situation that can't last. The second part tries to go on with the story, with the objective to make things move and reach a conclusion. It was necessary but less successful. -
t-dooley-69-38691617 April 2017Marie and Boris were in love once and have two daughters and a lovely house that Boris has done up mostly by himself. Somewhere along that journey the love has been reversed and now Marie can not abide the sight of her husband. They seem to have arrangements to cohabit until finances have been sorted but things are steadily falling apart.
The film can be a hard watch as anyone going through a relationship meltdown or who has gone through one will know. The ways they chose to humiliate each other seem to know no bounds. Then we have the guilt trips and the fumbling make ups.
It has the feel of a very well observed and constructed film. All the actors are great especially the children. What it does get for its unrelenting realism is a bleak and almost depressing film. This is as far from a 'feel good' film as you can possibly get – think 'Kramer Vs Kramer' only with better wine. As an artistic endeavour though it does have to be applauded for its achievements – but I had to watch something more cheery afterwards so do be warned. -
bjarias23 August 2022... considering divorce rates are so unwaveringly high... many can relate to the tale being told... it's a very well-made-acted-film that has realism going for it... one reviewer mentioned when they have watched something of this depressing a nature, they need allow time to then find something more uplifting right after... guess similar can be said about failed relationships.
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ksf-217 August 2022After love 2016 .. aka l'économie du couple en francais. This is a familiar story for many of us...living with one's ex in the same house for various reasons. And of course, it's adversarial; raising the kids, working out household schedules. Except in this case, it ends up with loud arguments, in front of the kids. And we observe that they both have their faults..,, it's not just one parent's fault. Directed by joachim lafosse. Too bad they had to argue in front of the kids. As parents, they should have known better.
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hellasangel4 February 2022The film succeeds to shed light into the fallacies of a family, the distancing of the couple, the financial issues, and the stress associated with raising up children. The main actor, Berenice Bejo plays an awesome part of bringing out the feelings of the stressed mother who has put all effort in raising up her children, sacrificing everything else, including her husband. The husband is a secondary figure in survival mode, trying to make sense out of what is happening, occasionally exploding but most of the times playing his share in raising up the kids, of course in a less successful way than their mother and her expectations.
The film shows the natural carelessness of the father, the hate that builds up in the mother towards her husband, the dynamics of parenthood and the impediments of divorce, which encompasses the mother's dream of freedom.
I loved the spontaneous and unsuccessful way the father tries to keep the family together, the mother's unsuccessful effort to keep the kids happy while trying to get rid of the husband, the animal-like behaviors of a failing husband and the moments of bliss in the kids' eyes when they phantasize that their parents could be again together in love.
As in every family battleground the kids are the ultimate losers, without the mother realizing that her alienating behaviour sacrifices her only goal: her kids' happiness. The father, devastated by his continuous failure to link the family ties together, behaves in ways that he regrets and does not realize that it is this behaviour that leads to the withrawal of his wife. The film is very successful in showing this familiar downward spiral and the doomed destiny of a family caught in it. -
957/5000 It's a movie that would be very credible, but there comes a time when I get bored, I just hear that they are going to get divorced, that he wants more than she gives him and if he does not leave and that the reform increases the price.
French cinema in the purest style. The actors are great, everyone. The girls are great and it is very difficult to get that. It's all very natural. That part is great, but I want to know something else.
All movie shot in one location. On the one hand this is an achievement, but it is not such an achievement when in the end you get bored. And it is so, that in the end resolves with a voice-over.
Like good French cinema, photography is like a video camera. She is white and does not count anything. Also, the management, only cares about the actors, if it behaves very well, but does not staging or anything. It's like watching a play, but this is not theater.
In short there will be many people who enjoy it, if you do not care about watching movies, just a script. -
ravitchn19 July 2018Some American films about couples beginning to fall apart have been well done and funny even, but this film takes the whole matter far too seriously. It is a serious matter but no one wants just woe and woebegone. I much prefer "Kramer vs. Kramer" and "The War Between the Tates." The French and francophone Belgians take everything too seriously except what should be taken seriously.