Skylab (2011)

Very well executed

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Just make sure you watch this great film with good subtitles (if you don't understand French) because the whole of the comedy is intertwined in the language. Great writer/director Julie has become! Recommendations!

A directing effort by French actress Julie Delpy. Set in the summer of 1979, the slender plot deals basically with her childhood memories, as the ten year old daughter of progressive parents going to Brittany for a family reunion.One reason I was intrigued to see this movie is that I'm just a year older than Delpy and I remember the worldwide fears about the impending fall of the Skylab space station, from which the movie takes its title (despite the fears, it ended up crashing in an uninhabited part of the Australian desert). Delpy's parents as shown here (she plays her own mother), are, perhaps unintentionally, pretty obnoxious, post 1968 hippies belonging to the self righteous left and always ready to parade their moral superiority. They see themselves as super tolerant and yet they are willing to be totally judgmental toward those who do not share their beliefs. When the film has them argue politics with their conservative relatives (who are of course, portrayed as fat, ugly and vulgar), the couple is naturally given the best lines.An amusing and risqué scene has Albertine, the young daughter (the alter ego of Delpy) going with her father to a nudist beach, and feeling very uncomfortable there, while her parent is totally blasé about the situation. Also with Bernadette Lafont, Emmanuelle Riva and Karin Viard, among others.

... to see that Julie Delpy has done it again, writing and directing another bauble to add to her Two Weeks In Paris etc. What she shows here is just how sure-footed she is handling a large ensemble cast which includes half a dozen children. Okay, not a lot happens; Karin Viard takes a train journey with her husband and child, argues with a couple of passengers who refuse to change places so that she can sit with her family, she sits by the window and something about the landscape transposes her to 1979 and a couple of days of her childhood in St. Malo. She had gone with her parents to celebrate the birthday of her grandmother and it was, in fact, a large family gathering with the requisite amount of laughter and tears. The fact that it was based on Delpy's own memories of a similar gathering is really neither here nor there although it probably gives it a greater authenticity. A wonderful ensemble cast - including fellow writer/director Noemie Lvovsky - flesh out the characters to a fare-thee-well and I for one will be adding the DVD to my collection the instant it becomes available.

Julie Delpy is a French-American filmmaker who has weaved between roles in acclaimed films, most notably Richard Linklater's (soon to be) Before trilogy, and making accomplished films herself. As a director she is best known for 2 Days in Paris, a refreshing and genuinely funny romantic comedy which managed to deftly sidestep cliché, as well as follow-up 2 Days in New York. This, her fourth feature, is set in 1979, and centres upon a summer holiday family get together in Brittany, disrupted by the falling to earth of the space station which gives the film it's name.Delpy drew upon her own childhood experiences during writing, and even admits that "a lot of the lines in the film are literally out of my memory", with many of the characters inspired in some way by family members. The filmmaker stars as Anna, mother of Albertine, the nine year old obsessed with the satellite and unable to understand her elder's relative disregard of the news story unfolding in their direct vicinity.Similarly to both 2 Days films, Delpy's dialogue is natural and well-crafted, her characters discussing age, sex and politics with poignancy and unforced, subtle humour. Politics, however, is much more an explicit presence in Le Skylab than her other features. The adults of the group, reluctant to discuss the unfolding news story at first lest the children begin to panic, soon begin to speculate wildly, to results both humorous and unnerving.There's a tension which creeps into the extended family's interactions and results in many purely dramatic scenes delivered convincingly by the strong cast. The filmmaker's father, Albert, plays Herbet, a man struggling from the onset of mental illness and depression, and proves a compelling screen presence. Elsewhere, scenes exploring early-teenage sexuality are well-judged and compelling. Delpy handles these darker themes with confidence and dexterity, and Le Skylab is an engrossing film, elegant yet unshowy, and a strong addition to the career of a highly talented filmmaker.See more at www.theframeloop.com