Hollywood dynastic DNA is all over AND IF WE ALL LIVED TOGETHER? (M) (Et si vivait tous ensemble?), a fine French film that features Jane Fonda and Geraldine Chaplin.

Fonda plays Jeanne married to Albert (Pierre Richard). She is dealing with a fearful physical diagnosis as well as Albert’s declining mental faculties.

Chaplin plays Annie, married to Jean (Guy Bedos), close friends of Jeanne and Albert.

Both couples share a forty year friendship with each other and with a lone wolf Lothario, Claude (Claude Rich), who is preoccupied with erectile dysfunction.

Children of the Swinging Sixties and the storming of the Sorbonne, they now stand united in old age, raging against the dying of the light, recalcitrant organs and joints, the five forms a federation of friends and decide to shack up together.

These women and men who caught and sang the sun in flight refuse to go gentle into that good night; however their newfound communalism is not without its pros and cons. Memories, both good and bad, fond and foul, when flesh was fresh and firm, and youthful feelings flashed across the firmament, fuel contentment and contempt, yet in the face of mortality the positives prevail.

Fonda and Chaplin are gorgeous, and while Jane has obviously had some cosmetic complementation, it is subtle, and both women present a suppleness of body, presence and poise. Piss elegant!

Fundamentally light and breezy, AND IF WE ALL LIVED TOGETHER?, directed by Stephane Robelin, is a more honest less laboured approach to the geriatric genre than THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL. As much as I admire Dench and Smith, I’d rather cohabit with Fonda and Chaplin and their retinue of male duffers in France than some fake, fakir fairytale in the subcontinent.

© Richard Cotter

26th July, 2012

Tags: Sydney Movie Reviews- AND IF WE ALL LIVED TOGETHER?, Jane Fonda, Geraldine Chaplin, Pierre Richard, Guy Bedos, Claude Rich, Sydney Arts Guide, Richard Cotter