Arrête de pleurer Pénélope (2012) Directed by Juliette Arnaud, Corinne Puget
Comedy
Film Review
In 2002, the acting triumvirate Corinne Puget, Christine Anglio and Juliette Arnaud had a
huge hit on their hands with their stage play Arrête de pleurer
Pénélope. The play ran for over seven
hundred performances in Paris and was followed by sequel, Arrête de pleurer
Pénélope 2, which was a comparable success.
Ten years after they wrote their first play, Puget, Anglio and Arnaud
hoped to repeat its success with this big screen follow-up, but the
result is nothing lss than a total failure. It's a familiar
recipe. Take a banal storyline, marinate it in a sauce of stale
clichés and truly awful jokes, dispense with unnecessary
characterisation, et voilà, another prize turkey to serve up in
front of an undiscerning audience. The three amiable leads do
their best to crank some life into this turgid corpse of a comedy, but
having no obvious talent for directing and visibly struggling for
ideas, all they end up doing is digging themselves a shallow
grave. It's as painful to watch as someone repeatedly hitting
himself on the head with a shovel, and about as funny.
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Film Synopsis
Chloé, Léonie and Pénélope are three friends
who haven't seen each other for years. When they finally do meet up
again, it is in a solicitor's office. It appears that Chloé's
aunt has died and left them in her will a house in the country. Delighted
by this unexpected stroke of good fortune, the three friends decide that
they will spend the weekend in the house. That will give them enough
time to clear it out and get it ready so they can sell it. But as soon
as they set foot in the house they experience a sudden rush of nostalgia.
How many happy hours they spent there with Chloé's aunt when they
were children... It will turn out to be a very emotional weekend.
In the 1940s, the shadowy, skewed visual style of 1920s German expressionism was taken up by directors of American thrillers and psychological dramas, creating that distinctive film noir look.