C’est pas moi, je je jure! “It’s not me, I swear!” (Philippe Faladreau 2008): Canada

Reviewed by Jesse Solomon. Viewed at the 2009 Santa Barbara Film Festival.

Now-a-days it is so rare to see a movie with a completely original plotline, but it seems as though Philippe Faladreau did it with great ease in his newest film, C’est pas moi, je je jure!(It’s not me, I swear!. In his film he tells the story of a boy named Léon Doré played by Antoine L’Écuyer. Léon Doré is an odd boy, who idolizes his outspoken artist mother, Madeleine (Suzanne Clément), and finds no common ground with his older “normal” brother Jérôme (Gabriel Maillé). His father Philippe (Daniel Brière) is the complete antithesis of his mother, a perfect society man, who never tells a lie. From the beginning of the movie you can tell that something is not right in the Doré’s suburban household, Léon regularly has suicidal “accidents” while his mother and father literally tear the house apart every night with their violent arguments. Soon Madeleine abandons the family for a new life in Greece, and Léon begins to start more trouble than the usual egg throwing and trespassing, even going so far as to try to runway to Greece with a neighborhood girl who he quickly falls in love with. He gets away with most of his shenanigans by remembering his beloved mother’s famous words: “It’s better not to lie, but it’s worst to lie badly.”

This film embodied the perfect mixture of satirical language and outrageous plotline, giving it a truly unique feel. I think if the movie had been directed by anyone else it would have been deeply depressing at times, but Faladreau let the viewer feel a sense of sadness for only a moment and then threw an impossibly funny moment into the scene. I loved how much of the film was seen through the eyes of young Léon, a boy with an overly active imagination and a quest for the answers to life’s questions. Throughout the movie there are periods of simply the clouds moving, and the boy’s thoughts of Greece, which are simply magnificent. This is only L’Écuyer’s second movie, which will come as a complete surprise because his performance is one of a seasoned actor;  he plays a complicated role as a depressed, abandoned child who finds love in his neighborhood, and he plays it flawlessly.

C’est pas moi, je je jure! Is by far my favorite movie of the Film Festival so far.  It just blew my mind how this conventionally dark, serious film could be so hilarious! It really takes talent to produce a film such as this; I would recommend it to anyone who’s sick of the pathetic slapstick comedy we see in popular movies today.