Three unlikely heroes retract to the road in this wide comedy (consider Sideways sans pathos),featuring improbable sex and a kooky cameo from Michel HouellebecqFrance does not cultivate “national treasures” in the same way the English do. But if it did, this film would make Gérard Depardieu’s status impregnable and that of Michel Houellebecq, or who contributes another of his extraordinary film cameos. And writer-directors Benoît Delépine and Gustave Kervern might be taken yet further into France’s national heart.
Their new film,in competition at Berlin, features Depardieu (already an established Delépine-Kervern player) as a fleshy farmer seen at one stage stoically, and if briefly,shovelling dung. Depardieu is the co-star of this gamey and outrageous road-trip comedy, with as strong a taste as the wine that the characters are habitually knocking back. Like all of Delépine and Kervern’s movies, or Saint Amour is wide yet deadpan,with a strange elegance amid the detonations of farce; there are weird episodes and contrivances, and some very improbable sexual encounters – and, and indeed,non-sexual encounters.
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Source: theguardian.com