Subtitles good - you can read them! When the French decide to be amusing, it doesn't seem to require much effort on their part. Families - you can count on them to drive you crazy. And then you don't seem to be able to help yourself - you find that you're making your own personal contribution to the craziness. But that in itself probably won't be funny enough - more likely depressing. Depression similar to that of sharing a jail cell with someone - any companionship is better than none at all, but not enough better.
In order to escape our folie de famille, we form what is called "friendships." These are usually less crazy than families, but not too much less crazy. So mix the two together, and the possibilities are endless. Some film-makers embrace this endlessness, and a good share of these film-makers are French.
But wait, there's more! What we call "relationships." Let's just start with boy meets girl - that should be quite enough for "Rosalie Blum." So there it is - by now you pretty much know what happens in this movie.
This is a world seen through the eyes of women. All blokes are weird. Women have to survive in this bloke-weird world. In order to survive, women have to become a little weird themselves. But what starts out as camouflage begins to sneak into the female brain, like a more-or-less benign virus. More or less.
Oh, you want some details? Well, a few details can't do much harm. Vincent is a ladies' hairdresser. A pretty glamorous guy, right? Wrong. He's bossed around by his mother, who lives in the flat upstairs. Not bossed around so much as terrorised. Motherhood in itself makes women slightly weird of course, but in this case it's more than slightly. So is Vincent trying to find a love-relationship that he can use to liberate himself from this tyrannie de famille? He's not very good at it. Women for him are a kind of Rubik Cube. Then one evening he's buying something at a convenience store, for his mother of course, and he finds the middle-aged woman who owns the store interesting. Perhaps he has seen her before somewhere. What does that mean, interesting? Well, he's a lonely guy. Attractive young women, even though he must spend some of each day doing stuff to their hair, all seem to be locked away in the cubical galaxy of Rubik. Maybe an older woman (anyone who is not his mother!) might be able to relieve the dreariness of his life? Nah. Why would she be interested in him? However she becomes a resource, like a character in a very long novel, who is revealed bit by bit to a reader who finds the characters in a novel to be (as they often are) more interesting than the tedious individuals with whom we tediously spend our days in what we like to call "real life." So he carries out "research." How does this woman spend her leisure time, where does she go, who does she meet? In the tedious world of real life this is called "stalking" - and guys, if you'd prefer not to discuss your behaviour with a couple of very humourless cops, you should avoid the practice thereof. A stalker! Maybe this Vincent is a serial murderer, cunningly disguised as hyper-ordinary, mediocre even. And he has a mother? Has anyone ever seen this mother? Norman Bates, he had a mother, didn't he! Maybe Vincent has... (the mind boggles).
You see, this store owner, Rosalie Blum, has a niece, Aude, and Aude has two best girlfriends. This trio of best friends, abetted by a guy (who is of course weird) are not as crazy as a family, but they're crazy enough. Endless possibilities. It's going to be one long giggle.
In order to escape our folie de famille, we form what is called "friendships." These are usually less crazy than families, but not too much less crazy. So mix the two together, and the possibilities are endless. Some film-makers embrace this endlessness, and a good share of these film-makers are French.
But wait, there's more! What we call "relationships." Let's just start with boy meets girl - that should be quite enough for "Rosalie Blum." So there it is - by now you pretty much know what happens in this movie.
This is a world seen through the eyes of women. All blokes are weird. Women have to survive in this bloke-weird world. In order to survive, women have to become a little weird themselves. But what starts out as camouflage begins to sneak into the female brain, like a more-or-less benign virus. More or less.
Oh, you want some details? Well, a few details can't do much harm. Vincent is a ladies' hairdresser. A pretty glamorous guy, right? Wrong. He's bossed around by his mother, who lives in the flat upstairs. Not bossed around so much as terrorised. Motherhood in itself makes women slightly weird of course, but in this case it's more than slightly. So is Vincent trying to find a love-relationship that he can use to liberate himself from this tyrannie de famille? He's not very good at it. Women for him are a kind of Rubik Cube. Then one evening he's buying something at a convenience store, for his mother of course, and he finds the middle-aged woman who owns the store interesting. Perhaps he has seen her before somewhere. What does that mean, interesting? Well, he's a lonely guy. Attractive young women, even though he must spend some of each day doing stuff to their hair, all seem to be locked away in the cubical galaxy of Rubik. Maybe an older woman (anyone who is not his mother!) might be able to relieve the dreariness of his life? Nah. Why would she be interested in him? However she becomes a resource, like a character in a very long novel, who is revealed bit by bit to a reader who finds the characters in a novel to be (as they often are) more interesting than the tedious individuals with whom we tediously spend our days in what we like to call "real life." So he carries out "research." How does this woman spend her leisure time, where does she go, who does she meet? In the tedious world of real life this is called "stalking" - and guys, if you'd prefer not to discuss your behaviour with a couple of very humourless cops, you should avoid the practice thereof. A stalker! Maybe this Vincent is a serial murderer, cunningly disguised as hyper-ordinary, mediocre even. And he has a mother? Has anyone ever seen this mother? Norman Bates, he had a mother, didn't he! Maybe Vincent has... (the mind boggles).
You see, this store owner, Rosalie Blum, has a niece, Aude, and Aude has two best girlfriends. This trio of best friends, abetted by a guy (who is of course weird) are not as crazy as a family, but they're crazy enough. Endless possibilities. It's going to be one long giggle.