“Cléo, Melvil and I”, honest covid – liberation

Like a famous ’70s children’s show and its orange foam dinosaur, Arnaud Viard’s film is a friendly monster in a benevolent world of semi-precarious German artists. For children, we’ve been warned elsewhere: his daughter Cléo and son Melvil are in the title and film. Cleo, Melvil and I However, the film shot in the time of Covid has the peculiarity that it is not another “containment” film, hooked to the fourth wall of a camera, but the film “From the nose to the window”, Applause for the staff supervisor, subtitled comments from Macron on TV and the abandoned Paris that the filmmaker and actor invests in an unexpected setting of sketches that depict him, his life, his film, his ex, his future, his children and document his kindness. It’s a good idea to summon Marianne Denicourt, the actress with the bright smile who dresses as a pharmacist behind Plexiglas. Between two doors and two lively explanations of separated parents, Romane Bohringer offers the best written, funniest and most spirited scenes.

But Viard is not the remake of Woody Allen love on the run in the tones of a Philippe Garrel, possible general horizon of the series of self-portraits he has been making for twenty years – the most frank was titled Arnaud is making his second film. His world is realistic and true to the easygoing laziness with which the filmmaker inhabits it. Problem, we made the rounds quickly. In a way, its utter banality is what makes it original. The little chronicle unfolds with moments reminiscent of childhood Super 8 films, a family film that’s as gentle as can be, in a beautifully pared-down black and white.

Cleo, Melvil and I Somehow it challenges the viewer to be mean to him, the object art, and nobody deep down wants that. Nothing is discussed about the deserted world of the pandemic – at most we regret the death of Christophe before we start a shortened song of him –, nothing about fear, about illness, except flirting with the pharmacist without gel, without a mask. We touch everyday worries, a musical comedy takes shape, a brief bubble. Viard and his cuddly toy film, his job, his hobby. The ego trip is more generous than that of many more playful and even more inconsistent films.

Cleo, Melvil and I by Arnaud Viard, with Marianne Denicourt, Romane Bohringer… 1 hour 13.