Life of Riley (Aimer, Boire et Chanter)
Life of Riley, created by French filmmaker Alain Resnais, who passed away a year ago, is a testament to cinema. His last film is a curious comedy, with sharp dialogue and an incredible cast.
For the third time, after Smoking/No Smoking (1993) and Coeurs (2006), Alain Resnais turns a play, from British writer Alan Ayckbourn, into a charming comedy. The whole movie takes place in artificial decor, like the set of a play. Trees and houses are painted on cardboard and curtains.
Not surprisingly, the characters of the movie are rehearsing for a play. The movie takes place in the English countryside where the life of three couples is disturbed by a character that we shall constantly hear about but never see: the enigmatic George Riley, the lead of the play every female character is rehearsing for. We shall not say more about the film, where you learn scene after scene the dirty secrets everybody has been hiding.
As always the case with Resnais’s films, the film has an impeccable cast, with Resnais’s wife Sabine Azéma, and other regulars he likes to use, such as André Dussolier, Sandrine Kimberlain and the always funny Michel Vuillermoz, who plays grumpy like nobody else.
Life of Riley has the charm of every Alain Resnais dramedy, and will surely content the director’s fans. As for those who are not familiar with his work, the movie may seem complicated and foreign, but it will definitely please anyone looking for a French movie, well-acted and with many punch lines that can only be found in a French movie.
« So frothy and chiffonesque it threatens to burst its own cheeks. » - Village Voice
« Where the director's early work was haunted by the Holocaust, the atomic bomb and the Algerian war, Life of Riley blithely celebrates love, possibility and absurdist surprises. » - NPR
« One of the cinema's most lighthearted and free-spirited farewells. » - New Yorker