A fast-talking dinner party gone awry is the focus of Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte’s What’s in a Name? (Le prénom), based on the latter’s play. Barely providing time for the audience to find their footing within the French farce, the helmers commence with an onslaught of rapid-fire information, introducing the five friends set for an erudite exchange.
Public school teacher Elisabeth (Valérie Benguigui, My Father’s Guest) and university professor Pierre (Charles Berling, Forbidden House) invite their nearest and dearest into their home for a Moroccan meal. Trombonist Claude (Guillaume de Tonquedec, Mike) enters promptly, and Elizabeth’s brother Vincent (Patrick Bruel, Paris-Manhattan) swiftly follows; the guests then await the arrival of Vincent’s pregnant partner Anna (Judith El Zein, Monsieur Papa). To pass the time, the conversation turns to the name of the unborn child, discovered just that morning to be a boy. When Vincent announces the preferred – and controversial – moniker for his son, politeness and friendship turns to heated debate and fury.
A chamber-piece melodrama in the same vein as recent efforts Carnage and Between Us (as well as an absurdist comedy in the tradition of The Dinner Game) What’s in a Name? charts the course of the quintet’s quarrels – first over the propriety of appropriate baby names, then over long-simmering issues three decades in the making. Each character has a hidden source of festering ire and is afforded a chance to air their grievances; each argument escalates the intensity of tensions between the group, threatening to forever change their relationship.
Similarly, each actor is afforded a showpiece speech, along with their own moment in the spotlight. All five make the most of the opportunity, despite drifting between balanced portrayals and over-the-top hysterics. Bruel and de Tonquedec best exemplify the former, oozing charm and eliciting sympathy in turn. Benguigui and Berling’s fortunes are less fortuitous, with both often reduced to temper-fuelled theatrics, whilst El Zein offers a calculating contrast to the rampant emotion.
In their first stint behind the camera, long-term writing collaborators de La Patellière and Delaporte (2006’s Renaissance, 2010’s 22 Bullets and 2011’s The Prodigies) are at home in their single setting surrounds, their fluent direction matching the equally free-flowing dialogue. A mastery of tone, quickly shifting between seriousness and hilarity, is also evident, as is an understanding of dinner party dynamics. Of course, it is the conversation that captivates, even when bordering on ridiculous. The sharpness of What’s in a Name is its strength; its chaos may waver, but remains watchable.
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
What’s in a Name? (Le prénom)
Director: Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte
France / Belgium, 2012, 109 min
Rated M
Alliance Française French Film Festival
5 March – 7 April
www.affrenchfilmfestival.org
Also screening as part of Perth Festival’s Lotterywest film program
25 November – 14 April
www.perthfestival.com.au
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