Ils se marièrent et eurent beaucoup d'enfants (2004)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Yvan Attal

Writer:

Yvan Attal (writer)

Release Date:

25 August 2004 (France)

Genre:

Comedy | Drama | Music

Plot:

Is the love compatible with coupledom? And what of freedom and fidelity? These are some of the questions facing two married men.

Plot Keywords:

Marriage | Bachelor | Love | Friend | Oral Sex

Cast

Johnny Depp	...	L'inconnu
Charlotte Gainsbourg	...	Gabrielle
Sébastien Vidal	...	Thibault
Yvan Attal	...	Vincent
Chloé Combret	...	Chloé
Christiane Oui-Oui	...	La femme de chambre
Alain Cohen	...	Fred
Carolina Gynning	...	Zoé
Alain Chabat	...	Georges
Ben Attal	...	Joseph
Emmanuelle Seigner	...	Nathalie
Kitu Gidwani	...	Mme Gibson
Sujay Sood	...	M. Gibson
Ruben Marx	...	Antoine
Jérôme Bertin	...	Le client du garage

Also Known As:

...And They Lived Happily Ever After (International: English title)
Happily Ever After (USA) (DVD title)

Runtime:

100 min

Country:

France

Language:

Italian | French | English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Certification:

Germany:12 | Singapore:M18 | Switzerland:12 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:12 (canton of Vaud) | Japan:R-15 | France:U | USA:Unrated

Filming Locations:

Marrakech, Morocco

Company:

Hirsch

Trivia:

Charlotte Gainsbourg and Yvan Attal play parents to their real-life son Ben Attal

Quotes:

Georges: [subtitled version] Stop Yelling! And stop boxing, people will think I beat you!

Movie Connections:

References The Four Feathers (2002)

Soundtrack:

I'm waiting for my man

Love and Marriage...and other consequences

"Ils se marièrent et eurent beaucoup d'enfants" ("Happily Ever After") is a cleverly written examination of contemporary views on love, lust, marriage, infidelity, and the single life. Writer/Director/Actor Yvan Attal has come up with a winner, an entertaining, funny, and ultimately thoughtful treatise on how we cope with partnering.

Three men work together in a car dealership. Vincent (Yvan Attal) is the apparently happily married man with a beautiful wife Gabrielle (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and child. Georges (Alain Chabat) on the other hand is in a tumultuous marriage with Nathalie (Emmanuelle Seigner) who has gender issues that go far beyond feminism and negatively influence their child. Fred (Alain Cohen) is single, bedding every lovely woman he encounters, balancing trysts between mornings, afternoons, and evenings and is deeply envied for his Don Juanism. But Fred actually longs for the sense of belonging that married men enjoy.

The men's lives intertwine on many levels. Most important, we discover that Vincent has a lover (Angie David) despite his idyllic married life and while it is Georges whom one would expect to seek solace from a lover, he remains faithful to his nagging wife! Gabrielle senses Vincent's affair and encounters a sexy man in a music shop (Johnny Depp) who begins to preoccupy her thoughts. She is a real estate broker and comes close to an assignation with a client but remains faithful. All the while she daydreams about her brief encounter with Depp and satisfies her wandering eye with those memories. Fred discovers that one of his paramours is pregnant and happily decides to leap into the married fray. The only 'adults' sharing advice here are Vincent's long married parents (Anouk Aimée and Claude Berri in very welcome comeback cameos!) and it is this 'standard' that adds the final humor to the film.

The manner in which all three men deal with their living situations asks as many questions as it gives answers. Attal finds joy in all forms of coupling and is careful to offer all sides of decisions his characters make in arriving at what provides them happiness. This is a smart movie with terrific twists. There is just enough slapstick (an all out food fight between Vincent and Gabrielle - real life husband and wife team Attal and Gainsbourg - that proves to be one of the fun-loving bits of silliness that binds their marriage) to keep the mood light. Not a profound film, but a joyous French comedy handled by total pros! In French and English with subtitles. Recommended. Grady Harp