European Films

Camp leaders and the children they are in charge of grapple with authority, friendship, infatuation and other typical sentiments spurred on by warm weather in the French crowd-pleaser Nos jours heureux (Those Happy Days). Writer-directors Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano expand on their 2002 short film with a similar title and again follow the adventures of a group of twenty-somethings responsible for a busload of children at a typical French summer camp. The film’s cast is spot-on but the film’s script and editing take a few too many detours to make the trip really worthwhile, while coming up short on character development.

 

Jean-Paul Rouve, who was also the leading man in the directors’ feature debut Je prefère qu’on reste amis (lit. I Prefer We'd Stay Friends, next to Gérard Depardieu), headlines an affable cast that also includes Marilou Berry (Comme une image/Look at Me), Omar Sy, Joséphine de Meaux, Guillaume Cyr, Romain Duris-lookalike Lannick Gautry and Julie Fournier. They are, respectively, the camp leader, the rounded camp nurse (“I did a year or two in medical school”), her black boyfriend, an angst-ridden Christian with some serious issues, a tubby guy from Quebec and a ladies’ man and his possible first conquest who thinks she is on holiday herself. It would be difficult to get any deeper into their psychology, because the script from the directors is heavy on the happenings but slight on characters, to the extent that it feels like a live-action version of a comic strip at times. The children they have to take care of are even more one-note, though most of the young actors sidestep the cuteness factor with an appropriately low-key approach that compensates for some of the adults’ overdrive.

The film is as stuffed as a schedule for a summer camp for children with a short attention span: horse riding, camping, eating, singing, dancing, nightly expeditions (not necessarily organised by the camp leaders), visits to museums and to the beach (weather permitting) and the obligatory sports contests. Just as competitive -- though not part of the official programme -- is the pursuit of possible bed partners, by people from both age groups and even the elderly North African cook, who serves the children what he knows: grilled peppers and couscous. Though the film is set in the early 1990s, there is a distinct 1970s vibe to the proceedings from the get-go; an animated opening sequence in bold yellows and oranges is set to a pre-adolescent Michael Jackson song.

The success of films such as Nos jours heureux does not depend character development (which is probably why the writer-directors thought they could dispense with it altogether) but rather on the creation of a generally jolly holiday atmosphere and a decent quantity of laughs. Nos jours heureux scores big on the first point and passes the second if only barely, mainly because Nakache and Toledano have not yet recognised the truth of that age-old comedy maxim “less is more”. Almost two hours without any engaging characters is a difficult feat to pull of, and this is where Nos jours heureux stumbles, even though the affable actors make up for much of what is missing. Their cartoon characters and their predictable antics are indeed fun, but they risk to become irritating if they outstay there welcome. Those Days were perhaps happy, but they were also jejune.

 

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