Un Air De Famille review

Writer/director Cedric Klapisch's When The Cat's Away was one of the most delightful foreign language films to be released in this country during the last few years. So much so that it makes the follow-up, Un Air De Famille - a static study of family dysfunctionality - all the more disappointing. The movie is based on the play by Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnes Jaoui (who both also star) and is set almost exclusively at a sleepy Parisian café, where a family, including the bullying mother and various grown-up siblings, gather in preparation for their ritual weekly meal. What follows is a series of rather tedious arguments, as grievances are heard and old scores settled. Un Air De Famille feels like a piece of filmed theatre (save for the flashbacks to childhood) and is peopled by characters who in the end simply aren't that interesting.