Two Friends (2015)

the leading man is my tpye

Perfectly adorable

i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Louis Garrel joins his father at the other side of the camera for his first long movie in which he offers a fresh vision of friendship through a crazy comedy. The duo Vincent Macaigne/Louis Garrel works perfectly and it makes the public laugh. Regarding Golshifteh Farahani, she surprises with her performance of woman that resists to the two men, but that still manage to break their friendship. They love each other, they fight each other (with a cast and a script that flirts with theatre), we are surprised but we never get bored. Louis Garrel evokes a serious subject with a certain cynicism: the fear to be left alone in the middle of a trio in which friendship is sometimes swallowed by love. Because three can be friends, but love is reserved for only two. Even if the films is not revolutionary, it is quite entertaining and it has some key scenes that make the public laugh and give them some food for thought. Full review on our blog Los Indiscretos : https://losindiscretos.org

Going into the movie, I was eager to see what the director had to add to an otherwise classic topic: two men in love with one woman. I assumed that if Louis Garrel took on the subject, he would only do so to add a fresh and novel perspective.What a disappointment! The three characters in the movie are grotesquely one-dimensional caricatures: one is a sociopathic serial boyfriend, another is a ridiculous loser who's not only unattractive and has a whiny voice, but also sports an idiotic red baseball hat. The female character seems to have completely lost her compass in life, to a point where she inexplicably decides to hang out with two individuals who just assaulted her and whom she barely knows, at the expense of at least six months of her life. Why would anyone who's not irreversibly deranged do that? Other than to advance the plot of a wobbly movie, I mean.The pivotal scene when the two men dragged the woman out of the train was to me as close as one can get to a rape scene. The power of the scene is in no small part a testament to the talent of Golshifteh Farahani. But her craft was wasted in this film, and could do nothing to salvage the incoherence of a bad script.

This trio has already done a short movie about the same triangle : the fragile bearded friend, the racked other and the gracious Goldsifeth. Here the story is interesting and is reminiscent to « after hours » as Goldsifeth stays in Paris for a wild night with those friends instead of coming back to prison ! There is some good moments also because the movie is shot live in the streets of Paris : for one time, it's not the « city of lights » but the city of workers with public transports, old apartments, small streets… The cast is good, especially Goldsifeth who has totally assimilated french culture and better than some others native ! However, at the end, the movie is too much talks, not really optimist and repetitive with those hugging / fighting friends! As my version had in addition a horrible sound and no subtitles, it was really hard for me to follow it and i was thus happy when the movie ended !

You have here a sort of JULES ET JIM scheme where two male friends fall in love for a young woman who is also a probation inmate. A female who is unable to get back to her cell in prison because of the two guys' behaviour. This movie is interesting because it is a study of the friendship mechanism, at least among men. It explains how it works in certain situations, how it sometimes turns out. It shows how strong or how weak, fragile, it may finally be. I know that there is nothing really new here, we have already seen hundred times before but we never get tired of this. A good film worth watching. Louis Garrel gives here a tremendous double performance as the lead character and the director. Watch out for him in the future.