DELICIOUS AND TRAGIC
Scenario by Francis Lemoine
INTENTION STATEMENT
Main theme
Lyon, spring 2023.
Monica and Gérard, an attractive couple who have just passed their forties, meet up with college friends by chance. They will share the delights and tragedies of life.
The themes addressed
They will be most enjoyable, when we discover these men and women bonding with a sincere friendship, carried by the magic of music.
When their desires will be lived for some and fantasized for others. When we will see a beautiful unexpected love born between two women. When feminine beauty will put light in the eyes and make, for a moment, a man happy.
But fate has the unfortunate habit of giving us an appointment with tragedy.
It is through very different and endearing characters that I will be able to develop the torments and joys of our existence.
The characters
Monica and Gérard are a beautiful couple in love. She is charming, sensual and delights in Baudelaire's verses. She needs fantasy and dreams of being a libertine woman. Gérard, simple, whole, with charisma is passionate about classical music and plays the violin but he becomes sulphurous when he defends his political ideas.
They have a faithful friend since college, Fabrice, a philosophy professor, divorced, who constantly remakes the world and who is always captivated by feminine beauty.
By chance encounters, they also meet Solange and Michel, a couple who are fading into routine. Solange is a history professor, good chic good kind, she is very active, a way of avoiding asking too many questions. Her husband Michel is an eternal worrier who thinks he has suffered and not chosen his life. Finally, they will see Kristin and Daniel again, a couple adrift. Kristin takes refuge in her work and turns a blind eye to the infidelities of her husband Daniel who gets drunk on lust and alcohol.
Actions
Chance will bring them together and a nighttime stabbing attack, pressure and deplorable working conditions will lead them to recharge their batteries for a weekend in Monica and Gérard's house in Ardèche.
They debate immigration, religion, politics, medicine, human nature, Daesh, the war in Ukraine. They affirm, they oppose, they rebel, and reconcile by smoking a joint under the stars. Each of them tries to proclaim a poem or a quote. They are both delirious and touching. We feel a warm atmosphere. Together, they are good. We would like to be their friends.
They meet again another evening in a libertine club from which a buried homosexuality will emerge and reveal unconfessed dreams and fantasies.
Then cancer will strike one of them. To fight or not against the disease, we will have to choose. Chance will strike again and break lives. One rainy day, she is walking in the street and an explosion throws her to the ground. The shock is violent and leads her into a coma…
Genre and atmosphere of the film
This is a choral film in the comedy-drama genre. It is modestly in line with the films of Claude Sautet and more recently Denis Arcand.
Why this film?
The desire to exacerbate the sweetest and most painful feelings. Highlight human nature, as complex as it is unexpected. Address some philosophical, ideological and religious questions. Show the difficulty of choosing one's life rather than undergoing it. The difficulty sometimes of assuming one's sexuality. The difficulty of managing these doubts that inhabit us and the certainties that tear us apart.
I wanted to show a agitated and violent society, which takes away and breaks lives.
The impact on the audience
This film, with its music, will resonate in the hearts of the audience. They will be able to identify with its endearing characters and recognize themselves in the difficulty of flourishing in our social model. The viewer will be captivated, touched, troubled, amused, saddened. They will go from laughter to tears, as in life, which is so delicious and sometimes so tragic.