Tanguy (DVD)

Tanguy is a French comedy about parents who are desperate to get their 28-year-old son to move out of the house. The son, Tanguy, is played by Eric Berger. I don’t see enough French films to be familiar with any of the actors here, but Berger is superb at being charming, erudite, and affectionate, with a permanent little smile on his face that just makes you punch his lights out. Which is the whole point – his mother (played by Sabine ...
...is a problem, but when Tanguy returns from a week away in China, the contrast between the couple´s delightful Tanguy-free holiday and the invasion of having their son back in the house again is too much for him, and Tanguy’s father is prepared to do anything – even hire thugs to rough Tanguy up – to get his son out of the house.

What I liked most about the film were the characters – implacable, immovable Tanguy ... more

Tanguy is a French comedy about parents who are desperate to get their 28-year-old son to move out of the house. The son, Tanguy, is played by Eric Berger. I don’t see enough French films to be familiar with any of the actors here, but Berger is superb at being charming, erudite, and affectionate, with a permanent little smile on his face that just makes you punch his lights out. Which is the whole point – his mother (played by Sabine Azéma) is so sick of the sight of him after twenty-eight years that she gets dry heaves every time he passes her in the house; his father (played by André Dussollier) at first denies that there is a problem, but when Tanguy returns from a week away in China, the contrast between the couple´s delightful Tanguy-free holiday and the invasion of having their son back in the house again is too much for him, and Tanguy’s father is prepared to do anything – even hire thugs to rough Tanguy up – to get his son out of the house.

What I liked most about the film were the characters – implacable, immovable Tanguy with his smirk and ready Chinese proverb; his mother, choking down nausea as she answers his ritual “I love you,”s with “I love you too” s; his father, chanting “Tanguy’s gone, Tanguy’s gone,” as he does a strip tease for his wife to celebrate Tanguy’s trip to China; and his grandmother, who calls Tanguy “the Pekinese” (because, as she says, he is affectionate and is passionate about Peking), and who delights in reminding Tanguy’s parents that she was right all along: Tanguy will NEVER leave home! And I enjoyed the way the film plays with the hypocrisy of parenthood – for me, a lot of the humour turned on the surprise of watching Tanguy’s parents increasingly violating the rules of how parents are supposed to feel, as well as how they are supposed to act. Yet, the feelings of the parents retain a level of complexity in the film which keeps it from becoming two-dimensional – Tanguy’s mother may experience a moment of giddy relief when she hears that a plane, which her son may or may not be on, has crashed on its way from China, but this emotion is immediately drowned by guilt and terror for her son and at her own reaction.

But, ultimately, this is not a “deep” film and doesn’t break any especially new ground that I can see – it is just a fun comedy to pass a pleasant couple of hours at the cinema. On the last point – I thought the film was a bit longer than necessary – jokes were taken just one repetition longer than necessary. But my rhythm may be different from other people’s – in general, when I see a comedy, I leave wishing that about 30% had been edited out. And the ending of Tanguy seemed to me a gratuitous attempt to tie everything up – on the other hand, it’s only about five minutes extra to sit through.
 

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