Envole-moi (2021)

Directed by: Christophe Barratier | 91 minutes | drama | Actors: Victor Belmondo, Gérard Lanvin, Yoann Eloundou, Ornella Fleury, Marie-Sohna Condé, Lili Aupetit, Daphné de Quatrebarbes, François Bureloup, Gwendalina Doycheva, Jean-Louis Barcelona, ​​Andranic Manet, Delphine Cottu, Laurence Joseph, Nicolas Simon, May dubois

Everyone knows what a feel-good movie is. But what exactly does that term mean? In the absence of a clear definition, you can think of a feel-good film as a mountain hike that begins at dusk and ends in the light. A walk to the top, where the view gets better and better and the sun gets warmer. A walk in which the bumps you encounter almost disappear by themselves.

The above attempt at explanation is necessary to understand how a feel-good movie can also fail. Such as the French ‘Envole-moi’, a comic drama in the vein of the semi-classic ‘Intouchables’. A film that did almost everything right that ‘Envole-moi’ does wrong.

Like ‘Intouchables’, ‘Envole-moi’ revolves around a partnership born of necessity between two social opposites. Adolescent Marcus lives with his mother in a small apartment in a Parisian suburb. The boy knows that he will not grow old, his body has been in decline since birth. His attending physician is Dr. Reinhard, whose son Thomas spends all hours of the day dancing, drinking and women.

When Thomas parks his car in the swimming pool of his father’s villa, Dr Reinhard has had enough. He appoints Thomas as Marcus’ companion to brighten the boy’s days. He just needs to make sure Marcus doesn’t get too excited. Thomas knows what to do with that. He lets Marcus race in his sports car, takes him to a PSG game, and introduces him to a cute teenage girl.

That could have made for a nice film, but ‘Envole-moi’ is in many ways easygoing. There are a striking number of flaws in the script, the casting seems to be based more on name than on talent, the jokes are predictable and the drama is at the same time too intense (in terms of illness) and too superficial (in terms of elaboration).

But the biggest flaw is that this movie violates the unwritten rules of the feel-good movie. This is not a hike to the top but a 90 minute stay at that altitude. Hardly any progression, hardly any bumps. Time and again Marcus experiences something that makes him very happy, time and time again that is accompanied by laughter and tears and other emotional outbursts. Which, after one and a half ecstatic adolescent happiness, leads you to the strange conclusion that a feel-good film can make you quite grumpy.