Why Not Me?
original title: Pourquoi Pas Moi?
dir-scr Stephane Giusti
with Bruno Putzulu, Julie Gayet, Amira Cesar, Alexandra London, Carmen Chaplin, Johnny Halliday, Vittoria Scognamiglio, Assumpta Serna, Elli Medeiros, Joan Crosas, Birgitte Rouan, Marie-France Pisier, Jean-Claude Dauphin
release UK 24.Nov.00
99/France 1h31 3 out of 5 stars
Review by Rich Cline
Take it on the chin. Nico (Putzulu) gets the reaction he was expecting when he comes out to his glamorous mother (Scognamiglio).
A wacky French farce about coming out of the closet, Pourquoi Pas Moi? features a sharply insightful script and wacky, outlandish direction. In their late 20s Nico, Eve, Camille and Ariane (Putzulu, Gayet, Cesar and London) all work together in a publishing house, where they're openly gay and proud of it. But none of them have ever told their parents, two of whom are big-time celebrities. So they invite the folks for a weekend in the country to hold a mutual "outing", knowing it's going to cause fireworks. But that's only the half of it.

The film is charming, energetic and utterly disarming as it charges through its story. The characters are all rather stereotypical, yet they all have surprises lurking up their sleeves, both in little secrets and in the way they respond to the situations at hand. And the entire cast is thoroughly entertaining, especially as the generations come head to head. The direction is a bit distracting, as Giusti uses camera and narrative with little regard to coherence. Some sequences are edited into oblivion, while others are so gimmicky that that point of the scene is lost in the clever, complex camera work and actor movement. But as a writer, Giusti is obviously having a ball tacking this subject matter in such a comic way, briefly touching on the serious implications, but only in superficial ways.

[15--themes, language] 16.Nov.00

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