User Reviews

I was very motivated to watch this movie : 1) Alexandra is really my ideal woman as she is beautiful, funny and romantic. 2) Living faraway of my family and hometown, i really long for to get out of this dirty Paris and go back home ! 3) Balasko is a talented actress with an amazing career, totally snubbed by the corporation and she is the exact look-alike of our mother !

The movie starts really well as for one time this is a french movie not filmed in Paris (it's located in sunny Marseille) and with the character not having a prestigious occupation (Alexandra is jobless !). its first half is really good as their reunion makes sprites : we can see with truth that the family ties stay powerful but evolve as all the two relatives are older, mature, experimented ! When the rest of the family arrives, the movie gains more depth as it's the siblings relationships that are exposed. However, the last quarter is really rushed and this grandiose happy end seems a bit artificial !

Wow, for once a French movie that takes place outside of Paris, even way outside (in Aix-en-Provence), and treats this place just as if it was a normal place, and not just a zoo where real people from Paris go for a visit.

The protagonist, Stéphanie, is of course nothing less than a successful architect, and has "studied for 10 years", but now she's not only out of a job but for some reason also so destitute that she has to move back in with her mother and borrow money from her siblings. The movie changes its tack several times, usually exploiting a comedic situation until it runs dry. At first, the film cashes in on the situation of a grown woman (who is a mother herself) being treated like a child once again. There is a great scene with a overly jolly counselor at a job centre. Next, a comedy of errors where the mother (the utterly likable Josiane Balasko) tries to hide her lover from her daughter, which causes the family to suspect that she is becoming senile. At the end, after pulling a quick McGuffin, Stéphanie can move into a beautiful home and the family reunites around maman and her grey-haired gigolo. Roll credits.

Overall and enjoyable and light film with a forced ending which could have done with a better script.