This French comedy is one of the three films marketed by the UK independent distributor Tull Stories under the title of ‘The Joy of Cinema’. The German film Two to One (2024) was the first of the three that I’ve seen. The third, The Kitchen Brigade (France 2022) has a screening at the National Media Museum in Bradford this coming Saturday. Jonny Tull is trying to challenge the long-held belief in the UK that foreign language comedies don’t work for UK audiences. He’s set himself a difficult challenge. If audiences aren’t offered such films they will are likely be less attracted to when they are finally given a chance to see them. This film had a small but appreciative audience, partly made up of the vestiges of what used to be a considerable audience for French language films generally. Do a bit of digging into UK cinema history however and it’s clear that French comedies were perhaps once much more familiar. Only Jacques Tati tends to get revived these days but films featuring other comedians/comic actors such as Fernandel or Bourvil have seemingly disappeared. More recent French comedies such as La bonne épouse (France 2020) have struggled to get to the UK, even with Juliette Binoche in the lead. Often the top local film at the box office in Germany, Italy or Spain will fail to make it to the UK. No wonder we get accused of insularity.
‘Juste ciel!’ seems like an idiomatic phrase since several sources disagree about how to translate it. ‘Good Heavens’ might be an alternative. This is a broad comedy film with a deep vein of humanism. It features a small community of five Benedictine nuns, each a quite distinctive character. As the narrative opens, Sister Béatrice (Guilaine Londez) is collecting produce from the kitchen garden when she spies what she believes is an edelweiss plant, suddenly appearing in the Jura mountains. This she believes is a miracle and will improve the chances of the convent being praised by the Pope. As she runs to tell the others the news Mother Superior Véronique (Valérie Bonneton) is identified as similarly besotted with the idea of meeting the Pope. The sisters are actually concerned with raising money to support a local hospice and the youngest sister, Stagiaire Gwendoline (a stagiaire is a trainee or intern), spies a poster for a cycle race in the mountains with a prize of €25,000. This could fulfil everyone’s dreams of getting to the Vatican. But, apart from Gwendoline, none of the others are fit to cycle. Training begins with various mishaps before the real competition to spur on the sisters arrives in the shape of Mother Superior Josephine (played by Sidse Babett Knudsen) with her top team of young nuns trained to perfection as demonstrated by their extraordinary cycling skills. One last ingredient is that Véronique and Josephine have been rivals since their schooldays and their fierce desire to get one over each other knows no bounds.
The two Sisters I’ve not mentioned so far are first Bernadette who has been at the convent so long nobody can remember a time when she wasn’t there (she’s played by the veteran French actress Claire Nadeau). Bernadette has taken a vow of silence which means she gives another outlet for different kinds of gags. Finally Sister Augustine (Camille Chamoux) is the mystery nun in the sense that she is forced to reveal her previous life as part of the plot. Mother Superior Josephine doesn’t appear with her trained cyclists until half way through the narrative and her cyclists are never indivuated to any extent. There are just two other significant characters. One is the nuns’ superior from the local abbey and the other the male trainer of the other leading team of cyclists. But this is truly the women’s picture so the two men have to accept a back seat.
Just ciel! is presented in ‘Scope (2.35:1) and it lasts just 87 mins, the perfect length for this kind of comedy. I was a little surprised by IMDb’s suggestion that the production budget was €7.6 million. I know that French films tend to be more expensive than in most other European territories and I did note in the credits that there seemed to have been significant VFX work which was presumably necessary for some of the gags. Against this, the film has sold some 200,ooo tickets in Europe since 2022, so it looks like the producers are hoping for a good return from VOD and TV broadcast. I managed to find an interview on the Unifrance website with the director Laurent Tirard (who sadly died from cancer in 2024 at the relatively young age of 57). He reveals that his inspiration for the film came from watching a short film at a film comedy festival. He was taken by the script for this short and set up a collaboration with the writers Cécile Larripa et Philippe Pinel. The final script was the result of joint work on their initial draft. Tirard also said that he felt this was the kind of ‘family-friendly comedy’ that was much rarer today and he was pleased that it didn’t address social issues or problems but focused on its own little world. Within that it is great to see an ensemble performance of women of all ages. I particularly note that the music composed by Mathieu Lamboley was inspired by Pedro Almodóvar’s films – how very fitting.
The film seems to have a low score on IMDb. I suspect this comes from American ‘users’ who might find the comedy not to their taste but the audience I was with laughed heartily and seemed to enjoy themselves. I think I can best sum up by quoting my friend Bill who said it was: “A mixture of daft comedy, good humour and a nice humanist feel”. Of course it was already a winner for me to know that Sidse Babbet Knudsen would turn up at some point, but I thought all the other actors were great as well. It will be hard to find this in cinemas now but it should be available on VOD from Apple or Amazon in most territories. It’s a film to make you feel good on a Friday night with a glass of wine and some cheese.
itp Global Film 