♥BENTS: SUPERCILIOUSNESS

Website: incognito-lefilm.fr
Director: Eric Lavaine
Lead: Bénabar
Co-Star: Franck Dubosc
Genre: Comedy
Runtime: 93mins
Rating: MA
Stars: ★★★

The French tend to do fairly good comedies but I have to say that there is something about Incognito that just seemed a little too try hard and a little too flat for my liking. It definitely isn't a highlight of the French Film Festival to date - but I'm starting to wonder if I have actually picked anything any good!

Anyway. This is a film that was written, composed and starred in by French singing star Bénabar. Bénabar plays Lucas - a bus conductor and part time singer with ambition but not that much skill when it comes to writing his own songs. Eventually the band he sings with collapses when his drummer has a motorcycle accident and his bass player overdoses. Lucas goes back to the buses.

Along the way he somehow ends up with an eccentric flatmate named Francis. Francis was a mime who has performed after one of Lucas' gigs and at the end of the night asked for a place to crash and years later he still hasn't left. Francis is played in perfect French-clown way by Franck Dubosc. For me Francis (and one of his girlfriends Géraldine - Virginie Hocq make the film - but I can easily see that people who don't enjoy slapstick would tire of their antics pretty quickly.

One day on the buses years later Lucas runs into an old crush named Marion (Anne Marivin) and in getting ready for a date with her he discovers a song book in the guitar case of bassist Thomas (Jocelyn Quivrin). The songs contained are dynamite and through a series of coincidences Lucas - now Luka is famous - selling millions of records and recognised everywhere he goes.

Then the comedy starts when Thomas reappears. Luka thought he was dead and now he fears he is going to be exposed for having stolen the songs from Thomas - a creative fraud. He decides to try and keep Thomas occupied for the couple of days he will be in France before he heads back to India - and in doing so avoid Thomas realising how big a hit he is. This is not easy and most of the comedy revolves around Luka attempting to pretend he is a normal person - right down to buying every CD in a CD shop so that Thomas will not see them on the shelves.

The soundtrack is quite fun - very french and I am not going to give away just how Lucas and Thomas resolve this creative issue - but the twist is surprising enough and resolved well.

The problem here though is the film ultimately doesn't have a lot to say and was a bit ho-hum. That said - there were people in the session I went to who absolutely loved this film and laughed constantly - so it will appeal to some.

Maybe on DVD.

IMDb