Hunting & Gathering (2007)

Absolutely Brilliant!

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

It was a summary of the book with more than one wrong dialogs and made the whole case feel somehow unimportant. After reading the book I burst into tears, after the film though I felt absolutely nothing. Don't watch it if you have read it for those who haven't read it could be a quite nice little film but actually it has nothing to do with the book's perfection. While in the book you get the feeling of warmth and affection between all the four characters and get the anger and dislike of Frank and Camille transforming to love gradually and in an interesting way the film doesn't offer you any of that,plus it doesn't contain many interesting details concerning the former lives of all the characters. Their feelings are changed and their characteristics are not that similar. I'd say that someone who hasn't read it may find it interesting but I found it rather disappointing.

Claude Berri's most disappointing movie to date. Perhaps Claude is surrounded by too many 'yes' people to take a truly objective look at his efforts. How some critics could extrapolate any glowing positives from such a tepid offering truly indicates that a career in film critique is available to just about anyone. Remarkably ALL the characters lacked an ounce of charisma (quite an achievement in itself),with the result that 60 minutes into the movie you really could not care where the thinnest of plots was heading. Quite sad to say that even the normally beguiling Miss Tautou could not provide a sufficient distraction either - perhaps the 'Da Vinci Code' has momentarily upset her ability to distinguish turkeys from true quality.

It's Audrey Tautou, and ever since Amelie, I am of the opinion that Singaporeans have an affinity for the pint sized actress, and her box office draw here is fairly strong. Count me in as one of the fans who will lap up her cinematic outings, good or bad, so long as our heroine gets the opportunity to shine on screen.Hunting and Gathering is based on a novel by Anna Gavalda, and tells the story of four individuals whose lives converge in an apartment. In this movie directed by Claude Berri, I thought that it was split into 3 acts, with story arcs focused on the challenges faced by each of the characters. Tautou stars as Camille Fauque, a near anorexic surface engineer who smokes a lot, guzzles alcohol, but eats very little. Living alone in a small attic of an apartment block, she meets Philibert (Laurent Stocker), a fellow neighbour who suffers from bouts of anxiety. Philibert's housemate Franck (Guillaume Canet) is a chef who lives hard and fast, whose only worry is the welfare of his grandmother Paulette (Francoise Bertin), a senior citizen who fears being tossed aside by kin, and makes life quite difficult for her caretakers.The narrative is quite plain actually, with every conceivable development being very predictable. That means no quirky twists and turns for the sake of it, and it actually allows you to shift to lower gears to enjoy this outing. It's a story about having dreams, fulfilling them, and helping others to fulfill theirs too, through encouragement and support rendered. Having all four characters together under one roof, though brief it might be, did seem like an episode of Friends gone all French and all whacked with the age grouping, and proving correct the adage that two's a company and three's a crowd.It did try to cover a lot of ground given that there are a number of characters here, but it did so at the expense of depth. The romance entanglements between characters did seem rather superficial, bland, trivial and predictable, while Philibert's quest to stem out his stammering through stage acting unfortunately had to take the backseat, and thus having his character fade away somewhat for the last act of the movie. The most meaningful and beautiful arc here belongs to Francoise Bertin's Paulette, as her tale of fear of abandonment rings through very honestly, and somehow, you'll start to wonder when you're of old age, whether you will have companions whom you can get along with, or be forgotten and tossed to some old folks' home to spend your twilight years in. I felt that it was superiorly poignant, without which there would be no emotional anchor for this movie.Somehow, movies that feature food and classy restaurants (Ratatouille, Mostly Martha and No Reservations anyone?) of late that I've watched always have fallen into the clichéd ending. I'm unsure if it's an unwritten rule to have it done so, or if it's a formula that has proved to work every time. But in all earnestness, I thought it ended quite nicely with that happily ever after feel. In summary, definitely worth a watch for the eye candy cast, but it plays like a generic romantic / friendship tale that possesses potential that was hardly scratched.

"Ensemble, c'est tout" (the title translates to "Together, That's All," but it looks like it will be released in English-speaking countries as "Hunting and Gathering") is, at heart, a romantic wish-fulfillment fable, and a particularly French example of the genre. If you're a depressed, anorexic girl who lives in a tiny room and works as a cleaning lady despite your artistic talents, what could be better than having your blueblooded neighbor invite you to stay in his luxe, antique-stuffed Parisian apartment? By the end of your time there, you and your new friends will form a makeshift family, and you'll even find love with a guy who rides a motorcycle and is a talented chef. Don't worry that you hated him at first sight. It's a romantic fable; these things happen.At least, they happen that way for Camille (Audrey Tautou), the heroine of "Ensemble, c'est tout." Her host in that fabulous apartment is Philibert (Laurent Stocker), a young, eccentric, and socially awkward scion of an aristocratic family. Philibert shares his apartment with Franck (Guillaume Canet) the motorcycle-chef; and eventually Franck's ailing grandmother Paulette (Françoise Bertin) moves in as well.From there, things proceed mostly how you'd expect, with the requisite mixture of comedy and drama. The scenes between Franck and Paulette are the least original; the other plot lines at least have a few amusing incidents to liven them up. And the movie is so concerned with the romance between Camille and Franck that Philibert--who also finds love during the course of the story--gets short shrift. We never see him interact with his girlfriend, which severely limits his character arc. Also, in an American movie, a character who looks and acts like Philibert (shy, bookish, wearing velvet suits and bow ties) would almost certainly be gay, so it comes as a bit of a surprise to learn that he isn't. This, however, is the only surprise that "Ensemble, c'est tout" has in store.