Bienvenue Parmi Nous (Welcome Aboard) sets out its store early, unambiguously. In the opening scene, Talliander, surly and uncommunicative, is roused forcefully from bed by his wife. Dispatched to fetch a leg of lamb for lunch, he forgets the meat but manages to pick up a shotgun along the way. Shooting pigs, the merchant enquires? Yes, Talliander replies, vaguely. How many boxes of cartridges would you need? Um, just one, Talliander replies. The shopkeepers raises his eyebrows, but says nothing.
It brings to mind the metaphor of Chekov’s gun. If you introduce a loaded gun on stage in the first act, it has to be fired in a later act. This, one might propose, is in a roundabout way the trouble with Bienvenue Parmi Nous, directed by the French stalwart Jean Becker; it’s just too obvious. Talliander, an artist – played with a somewhat hangdog charm, slightly overdone but never grating, by Patrick Chesnais – is struggling with a creative block that has eclipsed the not inconsiderable benefits that previous success has bestowed upon him. One option, as the impulsive purchase of a shotgun presumes, is suicide; the other, in time honoured fashion, is the descent deus ex machina fashion of an unlikely intervention force.
The latter duly turns up in the form of Marilou, a teenage runaway from a troubled home who throws herself at the mercy of Talliander. Marilou (a role dutifully, if not particularly originally, fulfilled by Jeanne Lambert) is that strange combination of extrovert and gauche familiar from a thousand other odd couple movies. Channeling her enthusiasm, Talliander starts to see light at the end of the tunnel: but is it be too little, too late?
To be fair, once one sees through the signposted plot devices that pop up at regular intervals, Bienvenue Parmi Nous is diverting enough. One senses that it may have worked better as a television movie, such is the metronome-like regularity with which the turning points in the film arrive. It’s not terribly subtle, but it entertains. And one can’t really ask for much more than that.
Oh, and the shotgun does get used, eventually. See how long it takes you to guess when and where…
Bienvenue Parmi Nous (Welcome Aboard) (French with Hebrew and English subtitles, 92 min. 2012). Director: Jean Becker. Starring Patrick Chesnais, Jeanne Lambert, Miou-Miou.
Currently showing at Orlando Films, ZOA House, 1 Daniel Frish Street, Tel Aviv, 03-5402845.
