Tout va bien, on s'en va

Traditionally, sentimental family dramas are the kind of thing Hollywood is supposed to do much better - "Kramer vs. Kramer", etc. etc. Three sisters? Okay, Woody Allen's "Interiors", if you can stand almost two hours in which no-one even cracks a smile.Along comes this French contender. The cast is ... GULP. Miou-Miou, Sandrine Kiberlain, Natacha Régnier - the leading actresses born in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s respectively. (Just for the sake of completeness, couldn't there have been a fourth, slightly older, sister, married with a family or in a convent or something - just to tie everything up by finding a part for Nathalie Baye?) A father losing his reason - Michel Piccoli, only the greatest French character actor in living memory? This one was meant to COMPETE, folks. And it does.Two big differences in high-priced cinema between France and the US. The whole star concept is different; both Miou-Miou and Kiberlain have issued denials that they're stars, just actresses who work themselves silly and are guaranteed a box-office take. By French standards, Paris Hilton would be an American star. These gals just ... act themselves blue.Two. Films in France are never devoid of FUN. Think of "Interiors", and of the total lack of any positive pleasure to it; admittedly, Allen was using it to work out his own WASP-worship, but an early line of his - like "Where's the king?" "Schmuck, I AM the king!" - mightn't have come amiss. A good slice of "Everything's Fine" has us laughing ourselves silly - I loved the scene in which Régnier brings home the live chicken, with Kiberlain a study in deliberate non-reaction and Miou-Miou scared out of her wits and shrieking. And that's just to name one of many. The cast and the audience are both enjoying themselves.A precocious child, Alzheimer's disease, a sad ending - all ingredients for a Hollywood tear-jerker. Mouriéras resisted. THAT, for me, is the real making of the film - never mind that I'd go a couple of hundred miles to see Natacha Régnier playing Minnie Mouse, and that I think I consider Sandrine Kiberlain my all-time favourite actress bar none, especially in an often comic part. Contemplate the Hollywood re-make, respecting chronology - Michelle Pfeiffer, Gwyneth Paltrow (or Winona Ryder), and Scarlett Johansson as the three sisters? Robert Duvall as the incipiently senile father? All at the same level; but you'd never go, suspecting something like a damn rotten screenplay. This film is special in that regard - and only the French could get away with it.