The collapse of a world and the time after – Valeria Bruni Tedeschi in “What connects us”
Frantic voices can be heard in the hallway. Cécile (Mélissa Barbaud) and her husband Alex (Pio Marmaï) are leaving for the hospital. The birth of their second child is imminent. But when the mother enters her son Elliot's room, all sounds disappear. Only her hands can be heard stroking the boy's head to wake him, threading the child's sleepy arms into his sweater, and finally tying his shoes.
This quiet moment of parental care becomes a wistful memory over the course of the film. Little Elliot (César Botti) is temporarily left with a neighbor. Sandra (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) is a woman in her fifties, single by choice, and has little experience with children. And the bright boy questions her about her unconventional lifestyle.
Not even at his age did she dream of a husband and children, Sandra explains to the child, who absorbs her words with the wisdom of a six-year-old. By evening, the parents still haven't returned. Elliot gets a bed on the sofa.
Late one night, Alex stands at the door, tearful. Cécile didn't survive the birth of her daughter. "Leave him alone," Sandra says when Alex tries to wake the boy. At least for this one more night, the child should keep his mother asleep.
This tragic moment begins Carine Tardieu's brilliant drama "Les réseaux d'alimentaires" (What Binds Us), which follows the trials and tribulations of a father, child, and neighbor after the tragic loss. Over two years, the film, which has already attracted 780,000 viewers in France, follows the process of change, the adjustment to the new circumstances, the coping with feelings of grief, and the moments of joyful solidarity that arise from the painful event. The world collapses and must be reassembled.
Suddenly, their neighbors are in their lives: Sandra (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) helps them overcome their grief. A scene from the drama "What Connects Us."
Source: -/Alamode/dpa
And through a chance act of neighborly support, Sandra becomes part of the family's healing process. It's Elliot who repeatedly bridges the gap across the hall because he gets answers from Sandra to questions he can't ask his father.
Little César Botti is one of many lucky finds in the cast. The way the boy expresses his character's childlike curiosity and feelings of grief in his open face is heartwarming. It helps that director Tardieu ("Young at Heart") always takes a step back in such emotional moments, rather than lapsing into intrusive sentimentality.
Likewise, she refrains from celebrating the rapprochement between the headstrong neighbor and the boy as a maternal awakening. As an independent, childless woman, Sandra always remains true to her individual life choices. But she is ready to embrace something new, not out of a maternal impulse, but out of a deeply human one.
While the film initially focuses on the budding friendship between a child and a neighbor, it later shifts its focus to an increasingly broad spectrum of relationships that are imperceptibly woven into a sustainable social network.
Sandra reacts to Alex's advances
The view first falls on the disturbed widower, who, between overwhelming feelings of grief and the fulfillment of his fatherly duty, is searching for his way back to life.
That he almost inevitably falls in love with Sandra is both a natural step and a cliché that the film avoids with its worldly-wise rejection of Sandra. "You're not in love with me, you're in love with the situation," Sandra retorts. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, who has played the neurotic eccentric far too often, lends the somewhat awkward character a calm persuasiveness.
Sandra's rejection and Alex's burgeoning love for the fun-loving pediatrician Emillia (Vimala Pons) shift the balance of power in the constellation, which also includes Cécile's mother Fanny (Catherine Mouchet) and Elliot's biological father David (Raphaël Quenard), who suddenly discovers his sense of parental responsibility.
It's remarkable how director and co-screenwriter Tardieu succeeds in driving her characters' development forward credibly. She approaches them with an infectious joy of discovery, rather than constraining them according to clichés and expectations. When the assembled friends and family toast to life at the birthday table, it's not a platitude, but a feeling of optimism that the characters—and with them, the audience—have powerfully developed.
Along the way, “What Connects Us” has posed fundamental questions about love, parenthood, friendship, compassion, helpfulness, and the inestimable value of social relationships – and answered them in a lively, wonderfully incomplete way.
“What Connects Us,” directed by Carine Tardieu, with Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, Pio Marmaï, and Vimala Pons, 106 minutes, FSK 6 (opens in theaters on August 7)
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