Family Reunion with Obstacles

After recently tugging at moviegoers' nerves with her crazy clan in 2 Days in New York, director and actress Julie Delpy now steps it up a notch with an even bigger and more chaotic family reunion. Infused with autobiographical memories, Family Reunion with Obstacles recounts the summer of 1979, when little Albertine (Lou Alvarez) travels with her parents Anna (Julie Delpy) and Jean (Eric Elmosnino) from Paris to Brittany to celebrate her grandmother's (Bernadette Lafont) 67th birthday with the entire family on the picturesque Atlantic coast. A whole bunch of cousins, aunts and uncles gather at the grandmother's picturesque country house - and of course chaos is inevitable. While the adults laugh, gossip and argue, Albertine not only goes through her first love that weekend, but also a broken heart for the first time. And above all this hovers threateningly the American space station Skylab, which is supposed to crash to earth these days and could land in the middle of Brittany...

In direct comparison to 2 Days of New York, Family Reunion with Obstacles is clearly more successful. Admittedly, the arguments between the adults and the chatter of Julie Delpy's character in particular are once again extremely nerve-wracking and completely over the top. But fortunately there is a pleasant counterbalance to the exhausting moments. Because all the scenes in which the kids are the center of attention are extremely charming and wittily realized. Whether it's a somewhat unusual game of Barbie and Ken between Albertine and her cousin, or the uber-cool behavior of teenage Christian who can't understand why he still has to sit at the kids' table, or an awkward first encounter between Albertine and her first crush on a nude beach, or telling each other scary stories at night, it's these very moments that save the film from complete irrelevance and make it worth watching to some degree.

It's a shame that Delpy doesn't apply the fine powers of observation she reveals in the child scenes to the adult characters. Certainly, some of the conversations that take place at the various meals here are very authentic and thus have a certain entertainment factor. But when the partly very hysterical characters talk themselves into a rage about political topics of the late 70s and just scream at each other for minutes, it's not amusing anymore, but just annoying. Furthermore, there are isolated scenes that are quite nice in themselves, but are stretched out for far too long and thus lose any impact as well. One moment in particular stands out, when Jean tells a story to the passengers in the car on the way to the beach. It's quite nice, but lasts for what feels like ten minutes and doesn't really have anything to do with the movie itself. This scene starts out funny and likeable, but in the end it just stays in your mind as inconsequential.

And in the end, unfortunately, this is true for the whole movie. There are isolated quite wonderful moments, the scenery of the coastal region of Brittany is a feast for the eyes and some actors of the ensemble are with infectious joy of acting at the job. But that's unfortunately not enough in this case to hide the too many exhausting, and long-winded moments. And also the attempt to force a depth of content, which the film strictly speaking doesn't have, through a bracket set in the present with Karin Viard as the adult Albertine and through the symbolism of the pre-crash Skylab, unfortunately only works to a very limited extent. Bottom line, this family reunion with obstacles isn't quite the disaster that family reunions sometimes are. However, the perfect feel-good movie that shines through in some moments here is not what this comedy has become either. But if you liked 2 Days in New York, you'll certainly have a lot of fun with this film.

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp