Let's Talk About The Rain

This is probably best described as a comedy of manners, although it isn't exactly packed with belly-laughs. True, there are a couple of genuinely hilarious moments (note to budding documentarians: don't conduct an interview on a picturesque hillside where sheep are grazing ...) but mostly the humour is very gentle. Michel seems oblivious to his own incompetence as a film-maker. He misses a cracking interview because he hasn't started the camera and manages to drop part of his camera equipment on a baby's head during a baptism (another comic highlight) However, he's never vilified. For all his faults, the film is as generous to him as it is to the other characters, although Florence, the neglected younger sister carrying a lifetime's worth of resentment on her shoulders, verges on the truly irritating. The heart of the film is Karim, Michel's assistant, who proves to be a better filmmaker than his mentor: he possesses a nice line in aggressive interviewing and a knack for hilariously apt montage. As the son of the bourgeois family's (now unpaid) Arab housekeeper, he also seethes with resentment but never lapses into self-pity, unlike Florence. He provides a much needed opposing viewpoint to the smugness surrounding him.