(courtesy IMDb)
The end of something is always bittersweet.
Even the final moments of something awful comes with a sense of mourning for what otherwise might have been; but when it’s something like a marriage between two people who were once genuinely in love, that sense of loss and grief is all the more palpable.
In Meet the Leroys (Nous, les Leroy) by writer-director Florent Bernard, we are privileged to see how one couple handles the breakdown of their relationship, a marriage that was once so treasured but over time, as so happens, ended up becoming a vestige of a far brighter, more hopeful and loved-up age.
Sandrine Leroy (Charlotte Gainsbourg) has had enough.
She is treated like a piece of the furniture by husband Christophe (José Garcia) who spends alarmingly big chunks of time at work and who really only communicates with his wife on admin tasks, such as what to do with some domestic task or issues relating to their two teenage kids, Bastien Leroy (Hadrien Heaulmé) and Loreleï Leroy (Lily Aubry).
He’s fallen into a routine where, while he undoubtedly loves his wife and family, he has lost sight of living that out on a daily basis with the net effect that his wife is calling time, which she does to Christophe’s utter astonishment, then anger, then desperate bargaining.
His solution to her saying the marriage is over and she wants to move on? Take Sandrine and the kids away for a weekend road trip, one which retraces places and times that formed the memories that shaped and defined the Leroy family.
But as most ideas borne of desperation and fervently fast planning are apt to be, this weekend save-the-marriage gambit does work as planned.
While there are some tender moments between the siblings – Heaulmé and Aubry are superb in their roles, delivering masterful performances that speak to their sense of being adrift in life and to a certain extent, from their parents – and Christophe and Sandrine do rekindle some form of their once-passionate connectivity and romantic closeness, it’s clear as the Meet the Leroys (Nous, les Leroy) progresses, that what once was there is now lost and has been, irretrievably, for some time.
It’s sad to see the truth dawn on Christophe’s face but the sad fact of the matter is he neglected this person and this thing, his marriage, that he claimed to love, and it has now fallen so far into disrepair that there is no hope of rescuing it.
And that, right there, is why Meet the Leroys (Nous, les Leroy) is so refreshing to watch.
It doesn’t ply that Hollywood idea that wondrously good things can be pulled from a funeral pyre; it may make for a feel-good slice of cinematic inspiration, but it does nothing to reflect the reality of life that things die and are lost and cannot be retrieved.
Is that sad? Desperately so, but by laying the foundation for that hard-to-handle truth in the narrative, Meet the Leroys (Nous, les Leroy) makes itself into a powerful and ultimately surprising heartwarming story about lifes ups and downs and how you can fight them, or liberatingly, choose to ride them and go where the currents are going to flow no matter what you do to try and stop hem.
The central lesson of Meet the Leroys (Nous, les Leroy), which is surprisingly full (given the subject matter) of sparkling comedy and gloriously good slapstick shenanigans, and most of real, if fleeting, unity, between the various family members, is that while fighting for what you love is a worthy and admirable act, that timing is everything and that sometimes, regrettably, things are too far gone to save.
That truth adds a melancholic element to just about every scene, and while Meet the Leroys (Nous, les Leroy) arrives at a good and lasting place in its final act, you cannot shy away from the fact that so much has been needlessly lost in the arrival at this new beginning.
Yes, the family moves on, and yes, it’s not in the same form as it was when the film started, but the sgtory recognises, and it’s liberating to see it do so, that good things can happen even as you mourn what was once in existence.
People by and large prefer a binary view of the world, but life is rarely that neatly convenient, and much of what drives this marvellously funny and touching movie is a recognition of the certain inevitability of dynamics and life progressions from which there is no coming back.
The masterfulness of Bernard’s approach is that holds new beginnings and greatly mourned ends in perfect, life affirming tension, and in so doing, doesn’t attempt to sugarcoat how sadly disruptive life can be.
This willingness to embrace life’s uncomfortable and often immutable realities relieves us of the pressure we often feel when watching Hollywood films to try and rescue everything, which is impossible because some things simply can’t be saved.
Sure, those involved are often culpable, and there’s no doubting that Christophe and Sandrine, the former more than the latter to be fair, have dropped the ball, not just with each other but with their kids who admit to each other, and then to their parents, that all is not well in their world.
But culpable or not, the truth is that life often deteriorates to the point when no amount of impulsive action and wishful thinking will fix what’s badly broken, and that it’s not a failure to accede to that grim and regrettable reality.
It can, in fact, be the best thing you can do, and as Meet the Leroys (Nous, les Leroy) ends, it becomes clear, without revealing what actually goes down, that moving on as the famil does is the only realistic way forward, and what while it’s tinged with sadness and regret, that it may be just what everyone involved needs and for them to head into new places in life, lessons learned, and ready for whatever lies ahead.