Gilles Legardinnier, “Complètement cramé! / Mr Blake at your service!” (2023)
It’s twee and artificial in style, but nevertheless this light French comedy-drama film highlights the importance of friendship and having hope, and in particular lays emphasis on helping others and giving them hope as a way of helping oneself. British businessman Andrew Blake (John Malkovich) is still depressed four months after losing his wife Diane so he decides to take himself away from everything and everyone he knows completely by staying at a French manor house as a guest to recover the memory of the time he and Diane stayed there. On arriving at the house, he is mistaken for a new butler by chatelaine Nathalie (Fanny Ardant) and her housekeeper Odile (Émilie Dequenne), but since the house has fallen on hard times after the death of Nathalie’s husband and Nathalie cannot afford to take on guests at present, Andrew agrees to work as a butler. There, he sets about befriending the household staff, helping to give maid Manon (Eugénie Anselin) a home at the house after discovering her mother has booted her out for falling pregnant, and resolving the tensions between Odile and gardener Philippe (Philippe Bas). The biggest challenge for Andrew is to help Nathalie save her property and assets from falling into the grubby paws of Madame Berliner (Christel Henon) who is a frequent visitor to the house – a formidable challenge indeed, not least because Nathalie is a proud woman who refuses advice and financial help from her staff, including Andrew.
Filmed in Brittany, the film provides beautiful shots of the manor house, its interiors and its gardens, and the property becomes an essential character in its own right. The small cast of actors give solid performances and Malkovich is outstanding as the eccentric businessman who brings everyone together and makes an unlikely family out of all of them, however tetchy and remote they all seem initially. Malkovich does a good if somewhat leaden job speaking French throughout the film but at 70 years of age he is game to accept outsider roles that take him right out of his acting comfort zone. The other actors revolve around his performance and I must say Ardant has probably done much better work than what she is able to do as Nathalie.
The film does run out of ideas quickly and becomes a series of light-hearted and implausible comedy skits which some viewers may not find funny (the home invasion idea is ill-advised) before the climax in which Andrew and Philippe discover that Nathalie has signed the contract agreeing to sell the house and try to destroy it. Alas, we are not given any clues as to how Andrew is able to secure Nathalie and the house’s future financially, though we can guess. The happy ending can be seen looming in the distance offshore, and Andrew himself receives a big surprise for all the help he has given others, but at least everyone in the film has experienced a profound transformation and can look forward to a more hopeful future.