Have you ever wondered where screenwriters get their ideas? This is the question that Frédéric Sojcher answers in The course of life. Jonathan Zaccaï embodies the director of a Toulouse film school played by Agnès Jaoui so that she shares the secrets of her job with the students. But these two have more in common than the 7th art.
“We necessarily draw on what we are and what we have experienced to create stories and that’s what the film tells”, explains Frédéric Sojcher to 20 minutes. The sparkling presence of Géraldine Nakache as a clever sister-in-law adds to the pleasure experienced in front of this mischievous work which pays homage to reality as much as to fiction.
Love in fact and in fiction
The Belgian director has already proclaimed his passion for cinema in I want to be an actress, HH, Hitler in Hollywood And Filmmakers at all costs, documentary about crazy creators. His love for the cinema and those who make it (or will do it because the student characters are as well sketched as those of the heroes) surfaces at every moment. Mixing tones and formats, it shares the heartbeats of a duo that finds itself after years.
“Transmission is at the center of my film as well as my activity”, explains the director who is also a teacher in real life. Carried by a vitaminized score by Vladimir Cosma, this fantasy oscillates between lightness and gravity to evoke the passage of time, bittersweet memories and fiction that intertwines with reality to the point of transcending it and making it more bearable. The verbal duels with speckled foils between the two heroes prove to be delectable, while the advice given by the screenwriter to build her stories suggests that many filmmakers would have greatly benefited from following her courses.
Kindness and elegance
Agnès Jaoui is particularly luminous in this film, which pays a discreet and very real tribute to her screenwriting activity, which she carried out with the very late Jean-Pierre Bacri. Here again, reality gracefully invites itself into fiction, which gives the course of life additional density. Whether or not you dream of embarking on writing, this walk in the heart of the imagination is good for its benevolence tinged with elegance.