Making of

Making Of, the story is in the title. Cédric Kahn films the chaotic making of a social film, where workers revolt against their boss. From the first day, problems arise, particularly budgetary ones. Will the director be able to finish his movie? Under what conditions? Can he shoot his film without exploiting his technicians, and ultimately do what he denounces in his film? Spoiler-free review.

The good idea of ​​this movie is to show the making of a film whose social subject resonates with the problems of the shooting. The screenplay is clever, intertwining several plots: the filming of the film, the personal history of the director, the making of, etc. The tone is comedy, even if the problems addressed are not. One of the plots is more conventional, even artificial, a love story between the young actress (Souheila Yacoub) and a young extra, who became the director of the making of (Stefan Crepon).

The casting is successful. The actors are credible as a technical team, with major figures of french Art house cinema, like Emmanuelle Bercot, Valérie Donzelli, Xavier Beauvois, who know the budget problem. Denis Polydadès brings his lunar comic talent to his role as Simon the director, Xavier Beauvois his good nature to the cunning producer, Jonathan Cohen his energy to the leading role with an oversized ego. They give a light tone to this film.

This light tone, this way of talking about the problems of social cinema without resolving them, by evacuating the suffering, comes up against reality. Today, speech is freed. Making a film is sometimes grueling and stressful work for the team. The reality of this environment that makes us dream comes to light: moral harassment, sexual violence, exploitation of little hands, each other... Having knowledge of these problems, the tone of the film seemed out of sync to me. But as successful French comedies are rare, let's not deny our pleasure of going to see a successful and intelligent comedy at the cinema, which helps to demystify this environment through laughter.

Making of
Directed by Cédric Kahn
Produced by Olivier Delbosc
Written by Fanny Burdino, Samuel Doux
Starring Denis Podalydès, Jonathan Cohen, Stefan Crepon, Souheila Yacoub, Emmanuelle Bercot, Xavier Beauvois, Valérie Donzelli
Music by Astrid Gomez-Montoya, Rebecca Delannet
Cinematography : Patrick Ghiringhelli
Edited by Yann Dedet
Production companies: Curiosa Films, Tropdebonheur productions, France 2 Cinéma, UMedia
Distributed by Ad Vitam (France)
Release date : January 10 2023 (France)
Running time : 114 minutes

Viewed December 15, 2023 at Cilenzio des Prés in Paris

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