22/08/2023 - Yolande Moreau returns with her third feature film as director, a story of love and friendship tinted with nostalgia

Estéban, William Sheller, Yolande Moreau and Grégory Gadebois in The Jolly Forgers

19 years after When The Sea Rises, 10 years after Henri [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Yolande Moreau
film profile], Belgian comedian and filmmaker Yolande Moreau is back with The Jolly Forgers [+see also:
trailer
interview: Yolande Moreau
film profile], a melancholy reflection on the love for art and the art of love, which had its world premiere in Competition at the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival.

Mireille goes back home. A little lost, a little confused, she moves into her childhood home by the sea, where the walls are crumbling and the memories bubble back up. There, Mireille is tending to a heat broken forty years ago. "I’d given him my soul, and he turned it into ruins". At first, Mireille is alone. She lives off a modest job working at the cafeteria of the Charleville museum, makes a few more bucks reselling cigarettes and saves money by stealing toilet paper. et chipe du papier toilettes. Her reunion with her sister is turbulent, her life choices judged and questioned. The fate of the family home hangs in the balance. Times are tough, and taking care of the house is expenses. So Mireille has an idea: she will take in some roommates, three men, three other lonely people who come to alleviate her own loneliness. 

With her cowboy, her gardener and her painter, Mireille recreates for herself something like a family, or rather a slightly subversive interpretation of the idea of the family, where people take on certain roles until the masks finally slip. Each has their secrets, their wounds, and this little band of liars keep each other warm. These three loving friendships will open the way for an unexpected return, that of Mireille’s first love, who left her heart in pieces and made her spend time in prison. 

This chosen family is also a cinema family. We can feel the joy Yolande Moreau had in re-created a band for the duration of a film. Her small male harem brings together Grégory Gadebois, Estéban, Sergi Lopez and Thomas Guy, singular personalities that naturally blend into the universe of the Belgian filmmaker, who also reunites with François Morel, her old partner in crime from the Deschiens TV series, during a delicate and intimate scene cradled by the waking dreams of the Wallace Collection. 

Yolande Moreau returns here to her poetic tone that verges on the burlesque, a trademark from her first films. It is a small, artisanal thing, like the record player Mireille finds in the family home, that turns a little slowly. A poetry that grants itself the right to take its time, even to belong to another era, and that defends the use of lies to dream and to take comfort from our own merciless truths. Some may find this too slow, not connect to the faded and innocent charm of the director, or struggle to let themselves go along with the story. The latter allows itself some exercises in style (silent film, sung sections, even a courtship ritual), features many artists sincere or fake, and sings the praise of the power of sounds, words and colours, before ending with a melancholy love song. 

Produced by Artemis Production (Belgium) and Christmas in July (France), the film will be released on 11 October in France (distributed by Le Pacte) and on 8 November in Belgium (distributed by O’Brother Distribution). International sales are handled by Indie Sales.

(Translated from French)