The prospect of seeing the imperious Catherine Deneuve and the chameleon actress par excellence Andrea Riseborough cross swords in Funny Birds (Over the Seasons, in French version), second film by Hanna Ladoul and Marco La Via, had everything going for it. seduce. However, the proposal from the French tandem to whom we owe Nous les coyotes (2018), a road movie set in Los Angeles never released in Quebec, is to die of boredom.
His mother, Laura (Riseborough), suffering from cancer, Charlie (Morgan Saylor, whom Ladoul and La Via directed in We the Coyotes), a finance student, has come to help him manage his modest organic farm in the depths of from Virginia where she raises chickens. Summer passes slowly, then autumn brings Solange (Deneuve), Laura’s eccentric and unworthy mother, whose existence Charlie was unaware of until then. The three women will have to learn to live together while Laura recovers.
While they avoid or neglect to develop the conflictual relationship between Solange and Laura and limply deal with generational conflicts, Hanna Ladoul and Marco La Via embarrass the story of a laborious and unexciting intrigue around an avian flu epidemic. Thus, Charlie and Solange do everything possible to save the chickens so dear to Laura’s heart from whom they hide the truth through scenes intended to be funny.
A few unsubstantial secondary characters flash by, including the sheriff (Ken Samuels) who has a crush on Solange and a heavily pregnant farmer (Naima Hebrail Kidjo) who will be the accomplice of Charlie and his grandmother.
With an undeniable bucolic charm, benefiting from careful photography that does justice to the beauty of each season and settings as messy as they are warm, Over the Seasons has too little to tell to really arouse interest. Worse still, the pace is so lethargic that it completely undermines this film, where the name of Martin Scorsese appears in the credits as executive producer. So much so that Catherine Deneuve, very convincing as a cool feminist who refuses to be called grandma, sometimes seems to be royally bored in this mess.
Alongside the great lady of French cinema, the British Andrea Riseborough and the American Morgan Saylor deliver moving and solid performances, which make this dramatic comedy enjoyable if not memorable.
