23 February 2024.
By Neptune
FUNNY BIRDS (AU FIL DES SAISONS) **1/2 (vo English)
There’s no doubt about it – Catherine Deneuve is a star. She has been for many decades since her first big splash in “Les Parapluies de Cherbourg” from 1964. She is not only a treasured national icon in France, but also an international star proving once again, with this American film produced by Martin Scorsese, that she can light up the screen with her undiminished charm and talent – at the age of 80!
In fact, that’s exactly what she does when she finally appears in this somewhat bland, obviously formulaic story of three generations of women on a chicken farm on the East Coast of the U.S. – daughter, mother and grandmother – who have had a strained relationship until now. As a redhead, the usually blond Deneuve literally ignites the uneasy relationship between the urban daughter who has come to take care of her ill mother. Deneuve of course plays the long-lost grandmother who has stayed away for decades in her native France, and of whom her granddaughter had never an inkling.
There are the myriad birds that the sick mother adores, the multitude of eggs they must produce to keep the farm going, and the bird flu that hits the region just at the wrong time. Then there are the good neighbors, a too-nosy police officer and the sheriff who begins to fall for this exotic grandmother. Of course it’s Deneuve’s character that imports all this old world allure and wisdom, and she does it with delightful panache in this both silly and moving yarn that is this farmyard adventure. See it for Queen Catherine.
Superb **** Very Good *** Good ** Mediocre * Miserable – no stars
By Neptune
Neptune Ravar Ingwersen reviews film extensively for publications in Switzerland. She views 4 to 8 films a week and her aim is to sort the wheat from the chaff for readers.
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