“Tastes and colors”, the good movie surprise of the week

After several critical successes including “Le Nom des gens” and “La Lutte des classes”, the director Michel Leclerc returns with a very ambitious and very successful musical film.

A young Parisian singer, Marcia, spends her nights in the huge messy apartment of Daredjane, 80 years old, where they record songs. But when the old singer with a pop-rock past disappears, Marcia finds herself orphaned both of a spiritual mother, but also of an album in the making, because here it is confronted with the “beneficiary”.

The beneficiary is Anthony, the nephew from the suburbs and resourceful, who has nothing to wax about, neither Daredjane, nor his music for sores, nor Marcia. Until he realizes that a heavenly manna may be falling on him. And Marcia may not just be a pretty girl from another world of pretentiousness and disconnectionbut a real singer who collects views on YouTube…

To succeed in this kind of bet, you have to work a lot. Because Michel Leclerc’s bet, once again, is to propose something intelligent, documented, poetic, funny… in short, balanced.

First layer to make the base: its mythical and aging singer must be credible. For this, we wrote a whole repertoire for him (over 50 years of career), we shaped a whole quirky – but coherent – ​​universe for him, and above all we found him a performer at his height in the person of the excellent Judith Chemla… Because above all Daredjane must not be just a pretext for the parallel romantic intrigue.

Here too, we play tight to sacrifice to the essentials of the genre (approach, repulsion, seduction, complication …), while thwarting a maximum of clichés (difference in environment, impossible love, attraction of bodies…).

Great care is taken with the many small roles that flesh out or revive the story and this can also be seen in the choice of actors. In the role of the impresario, we find Philippe Rebbot, in great form. In that of the DJ-rapper-arranger, Arthur. And as a “has been” charming singer, Francois Morel.

But of course it is the young couple who win the day. We already knew Felix Moati, seen recently in “The real family” or the Arte series “No Man’s Land”. As for Rebecca Marder, it explodes! The regulars of the Comédie Française already knew her since she was hired at the age of 20, thus becoming the youngest of the troupe. It is predicted to have a good longevity, both its naturalness takes everything in its path.