Un Héros Très Discret (1996)

Quite a nice film, in which the pedantic attitude of Albert (convincingly played by Kassovitz) provides the necessary fun, without the film losing its heart. Because in essence it is of course increasingly difficult for him to maintain the lie.

After De Battre Mon Coeur S'est Arrêté and Sur Mes Lèvres, Audiard once again manages to keep me captivated throughout the film, and in terms of tone, Un Héros Très Discret reminded me a bit of the work of Jeunet. Nice!

Translated from Dutch · View original

Satire about an imaginative fake war hero, who uses cunning and deceit to pave his way to the top in an improbable way. After an hour or so I had had enough, because what followed was basically more of the same.

A fine role by Mathieu Kassovitz by the way. Too bad his “love interest” Anouk Grinberg is only introduced so late in the story. That could have provided more variation.

Translated from Dutch · View original

Fun movie though. The whole setup with a kind of mockumentary in it works quite well. The film itself is quite episodic and sometimes messily edited - Audiard sometimes seems more concerned with fun directorial things than with telling a visually and content-wise coherent story, although that does make the film fresh to watch. As a drama, however, the film does not work entirely great for those reasons and not every scene is equally successful, which makes the film drag a bit on balance. But all in all there are enough good moments and I enjoyed myself reasonably well. The fact that this is something different from usual in terms of style makes the score go up. 3.5*.

Translated from Dutch · View original