Product Details

• Actors: Jean-Pierre Bacri, Antoine Chappey, Hugo Charpiot, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Walter Depergh
• Format: Color, Letterboxed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Subtitles: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Fox Lorber
• VHS Release Date: May 23, 2000
• Run Time: 110 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 157252488X
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #336,147 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

The fourth feature from director Cédric Klapisch, a graduate of the N.Y.U. film school, is a tight, depressing comedy of manners-or, at any rate, of increasingly bad manners. A family gathers at a crummy café in a French provincial town; any hopes of a smooth evening start to blister almost immediately. The mother (Claire Maurier) favors one of her adult sons and disdains the other; each, needless to say, is unhappy in his own way. There is also a belligerently unmarried daughter (Agnès Jaoui) and a birthday girl, Yolande (Catherine Frot), who buckles under her first glass of champagne. Klapisch steeps his cast in an authentically sick and yellowing light, and there's real confidence in his timing: just as things calm down, the old emotional friction kicks back in. But the film is a struggle; it was originally a stage play by Jaoui and her co-star, Jean-Pierre Bacri, and it still feels sullen and cramped. Anyone who warmed to Klapisch's previous picture, "When the Cat's Away," with its rough and breezy obliqueness, will feel shrunken by the new work; what saves it is Catherine Frot, whose tipsy dance routine, revelling in indignity, seems like a brief and wondrous escape. In French. -Anthony Lane
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A great view of a typic french family, June 14, 2001

By 

Patrice (New york city, ny United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Un Air De Famille (DVD)

Well, To tell you the truth, I am french !! and I can tell you something else : I saw in each personnage a member of my family !! So true, so real,.... so hard to believe..... Best part of it, the subtiles are pretty close to the french version and it is very important for this type of movie.... If you like true people ordinary life story, buy this movie !!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A refreshingly hilarious movie, June 19, 2005

By 

A fan (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Un Air De Famille (DVD)

I borrowed the movie on VHS from my local library to "brush up" on my college French. (Don't worry, there are English subtitles.) The movie turned out to be one of the funniest and most poignant movies I had seen in a very long time.

The movie explores a dysfunctional family, and what happens when they come together for an evening dinner/family outing: two brothers (and their wives), the tomboy sister (and her secret boyfriend), and their overbearing mother who is always making barbed, hurtful remarks (in the form of being "helpful" or dispensing motherly advice.)

When they come together, all hell breaks out and the hilarity begins: heated exchanges, accusations, lie, threats, phone calls, etc. I laughed so hard and so much at this movie. It isn't raunchy Adam Sandler-humor; it's intelligent, sophisicated, non-vulgar humor. And it's refreshing.

I felt like I was watching my own family on TV. Any viewer can relate to this family because the movie isn't about French families; it's about families everywhere, especially yours, and the writing and the cast are superb. This movie is truly great.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Family strife, July 6, 2000

By 

[e-mail] (England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Un Air de Famille [VHS] (VHS Tape)

If like me you like French films, you will like this one. There is no plot to speak of and no time wasted in car-chases and violent action sequences. There is just fascinating dialogue and the interaction of intereresting characters, plus the expression of real emotion and nuances of feeling. There is an intimacy with the characters that is typically French and which the Americans rarely achieve. At the end of the film you feel you know and understand these people and are wiser for having known them.

I loved the performance of Catherine Frot in the film. She was delicious and made the character of Yolande incredibly appealing and lovable. What a crying shame she should have shackled herself to such a self-centred, unappreciative husband. He was the luckiest man alive and yet too obtuse to realize it. How appallingly sad.

The high-light of the film for me was the little dance Yolande had with the quiet,philosophic bar-man Denis, played by Jean Pierre Darroussin, who, revealing his kind heart, offered to dance with her when her insensitive husband refused - despite the fact that it was supposed to be her birthday celebration. Denis's skillful dancing surprised them all, and disclosed a whole new aspect of his personality. There is a touching moment at the bar when Yolande, suspecting Betty's romantic interest and trying to encourage it, says to her with a lovely winsome expression; "He's a good dancer." And at the end of the film when Betty and Denis are seen to declare their love for each other, she says delightedly, to the chagrin of her snobbish and spiteful mother-in-law; "You know what this means? It means he's going to be part of the family."