A feature film can be interpreted in many different ways depending on who is assessing it.For screenwriters, Un Air de Famille directed by renowned French director Cédric Klapisch is a film which boasts of a simple yet ingenuous plot whose strength is revealed progressively.For astute viewers,this is a film which highlights the importance of a family setup especially in the manner people with different aspirations and tastes are able to learn from each other.We get to see how some family members are treated more favorably than others.The learning in question is related to a family whose members gather to celebrate a happy event.The mark of Cédric Klapisch's leadership skills bears its strong imprint on this film not only in the manner he wrote the screenplay with Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri but also with the sincerity with which he has extracted excellent acting performances from these two famous actors.Apart from being an excellent piece of sumptuous entertainment,Un Air de Famille is also able to score good points as it is a good learning endeavor for everyone interested in French language and culture.This is revealed in the manner in which the lives of married people are delineated.This film also reveals the manner in which a worker's relationship with the boss is depicted.These two facets are useful for anyone who wants to watch Un Air de Famille in order to understand the dynamics of a French family and French language.

If your idea of entertainment is watching family members yell at each other, offer bitter sarcasm, and make each other feel bad about themselves, this is the movie for you! My French teacher told me this was one of his favorite films, so I ordered it from France in the European version. I was very disappointed. Granted, my French isn't perfect, but I understood most of it and still thought it wasn't very funny. In fact, it made me uncomfortable, and very little struck me as funny or entertaining. I guess the French have a different sense of humor. Because the screen play was adapted from a play, almost all of the story takes place inside of a bar, and this takes some of the potential entertainment value away. There isn't much of a plot--I kept waiting for something to happen, but it never did.

'Un air de Famille' takes (as one might deduce from the title) 'Family' as its subject. Specifically, it centres upon one middle-class family in an unnamed town somewhere in France. This lack of specification of location makes the focus of the film abundantly clear; the petty rivalries, failed ambitions and unspoken resentments that characterise the 'family'.As such, it is very well executed, with a funny and subtle script originating from the play by Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnès Jaoui who also play, respectively, the family 'loser' Henri and his sister, Betty. It deals with the universal truth that we, as adults, constantly struggle with the stereotypes that our families thrust upon us as children. Henri is 'always screwing up', and Phillippe (Wladimir Yordanoff), the elder brother is the shining star that can do no wrong, at least in the eyes of their formidable matriarch 'Maman', played with terrifying reality and stomach-turning implacability by Claire Maurier. Betty, as a girl, 'didn't count' and as a result seems to shrink from responsibility and commitment at every opportunity, turning to her brother for work and rejecting a relationship with the sweet bartender, Denis (Jean-Pierre Darroussin).The clash of these conflicting personalities takes place in one evening, as the family assemble to celebrate the birthday of Yolande, Phillippe's sweet and unappreciated wife. The is over-shadowed by Phillipe's anxiety over a two minute TV appearance and the disappearance of Henri's wife, played out against the backdrop of the seemingly bottomless insensitivity of their mother.The dialogue is sensitive and gently comedic, as are the familiar and mundane situations the characters find themselves in, creating a touching and memorable story. However it is perhaps this that is the central problem of the film; dialogue and character is so much the focus that the film-makers appear to have deemed it unnecessary to transpose the action from play to film. As a result, 'Un Air de Famille' is incredibly static, the action taking place almost entirely in one building, Henri's dilapidated and 'undistinguished' café. While almost total uniformity of location can be an interesting and effective device in film (Lumets's 'Twelve Angry Men' being the most obvious example), the choice in this context appears careless and unimaginative, leaving the viewer (or at least this viewer) wondering what the claustrophobia was in aid of.This is not to suggest that there is no creative film technique in 'Un Air de Famille', indeed, its use of mirrors and reflections as frequent counterpoints to shots adds an interesting sense of voyeurism. On top of this, it permits the viewer information unseen by the participants, as we observe reactions from characters behind or facing away from the camera. It is a clever conceit, adding meaning and, at times, comedy.Ultimately, 'Un Air de Famille' is a very enjoyable, sweet and at times funny tale of compromised characters and everyday life. Its denouement, although hopeful for the characters of Betty and Henri, offers little hope for other characters, such as Phillippe and Yolande, but perhaps this is the point; it is observation and understanding that the film offers us, it is perhaps too modest to suggest a solution.

This is a vehicle from and for (they both appear in it) a very gifted team of writer/actors or vice versa and in some ways a dress rehearsal for their standout Les Gout des autres which would, a couple of years later, cop a bagful of Cesars and deservedly so. Unlike other commenters I don't find the obvious stage origins a problem any more than I do with say, Francis Veber's 'Diner du Cons', which works equally well in both media. I haven't, alas, seen the stage version of this though I would dearly love to. The writing is spot on, the characters are flesh and blood and one hundred per cent believable. It's one of those movies where we can say that, yes, we all know people like this. It would be churlish to single out anyone from this fine ensemble cast, including the two authors, suffice it to say that everyone turns in a great performance. One to see again and again.