Good acting by Auteil and Jordana. It does with many contemporary matters! Very good film!

A fun dramedy about two opposed characters forced to work together - a grumpy old professor and a young student of law, an immigrant girl to boot. Well, the "drama" evolves along well-trodden lines, but it's really the actors (and well-written characters) that breathe life into this movie. Daniel Auteuil needs no introduction but Camelia Jordana more than stands her ground, the scenes with only those two on screen are what makes this story tick. All other scenes and actors are ok - there's not a single really bad one - but pale in comparison. Recommended!

"Le brio" which means roughly "Brilliance" is a new French movie released back in 2017 that is also predominantly in the French language. It is a mix of comedy and drama and runs for a bit over 1.5 hours and was directed by Yvan Attal who is also among the many writers attached to this project. I've seen people compare the basic story here to a modern version of Pygmalion and they may not be wrong. Anyway, BAFTA winner Daniel Auteuil shows great routine and physical acting at times here and is just as good as his young female counterpart Camélia Jordana who is not as much of a rookie as you may think she is when it comes to acting. She plays a student, Auteuil her (allegedly) racist professor. But the two enter in a professional relationship that may bring the best out of each other. This is really the heart and soul of the film. The romance relationships for the female protagonist are forgettable enough that they could have been left out completely. The drama resulting from the rich smart kid telling about the ways the professor wants to save his career feels forced and not as important as they want it to be. The young man, the taxi driver, the female protagonist really loves is okay, but the kissing scene feels a bit for the sake of it and his speech at the very end feels really not authentic at all, which is more a problem of the writer than the actor. The rise to success in the competition is okay, the subway scenes are good too. The one thing I liked here is that the film never tries to make an impact in terms of race relations from the dramatic perspective. The jokes about Fatima, halal etc. are funny yet inoffensive, which is quite a challenge to reach, but they did. It's really more a film about rhetorics, about philosophy and about the art to speak and convince other with the talent to make an impact in that field. That's much more at the center of the movie than everything else. It is well-acted, mostly well-written and if you like either of the two leads, then it is really worth checking out I'd say, especially if you have a soft spot for French films like I do. Of yourse, you may want to go for the original version then, perhaps woth subs unless you are really fluent. It's probably not one of the very best French movies from last year as moments of true greatness are not frequent, maybe non-existent even, but it's a pretty entertaining little film for over 90 minutes suitable for everybody between 18 and 80. Go see it, for Auteuil and Jordana alone.