Around a restaurant table, Léa, Marc, Karine and Francis form two pairs of friends who are completely opposed.
Léa (Bérénice Bejo) is a saleswoman in a clothing store.
She is in a relationship with Marc (Vincent Cassel), an executive in a company specializing in aluminum.
On the other side of the table, Karine and Francis are a lovely married couple with two children.
She (Florence Foresti) is a housewife while he (François Damiens) works as a real estate agent.
The perfect little circle of friends then.
But when Léa seizes her chance by writing a novel, her life will change beyond her expectations ...
Daniel Cohen is making
a feature film
with
Le Bonheur des uns,
focusing on the freedom of creation and the jealousy it can arouse.
He surrounds himself with caricatures as much as possible.
Léa is naïve and dreamy while her companion Marc is a macho, a little handsome around the edges, who doesn't appreciate change, especially when it implies his loss of dominant position in the couple.
The reversal of the mental load very little for him.
On Karine's side, the young woman does not have her tongue in her pocket and wants to be the center of attention.
Her husband, Francis, more discreet, is ridiculed in each dialogue.
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Difficult then to qualify the film as a comedy so much the comic springs are supported only by the bad faith and the hypocrisy of the protagonists.
This squeaky humor is perhaps the only strong point of the feature film.
The viewer, whether sadistic or not, witnesses the destruction of bonds of friendship and love between characters that are as annoying as possible and marked with extraordinary egoism.
Le Bonheur des un
explores the ravages of jealousy but also the possibility, in 2020, of living (and why not succeed) other lives than his own.
The film is placed on this side of personal development (even a little care bears) but does not seem to fully assume it or, in any case, does nothing.
To read also: Vincent Cassel reacts to the controversy around the film
Enormous
: "
We made a trial of intent
"
If the actors manage to give a real identity to their characters, the dialogues most often sound false.
After 1h40 of film, the chemistry between all the characters has still not taken.
The latent impression that director Daniel Cohen doesn't know how to end his story is confirmed in a rambling last act.
The links are made and broken between characters who never evolve in a coherent way, until an epilogue empty of any emotion.
