Review of We’re made to get along (Film, 2021)

When you lose one of your senses

We are made for each other, Pascal Elbé’s latest feature film, is a brilliant comedy. It brings together all the ingredients of feel good movie, evoking the loss of hearing without any confusion, but with as much modesty as derision. And it’s not that common to manage to maintain the delicate balance all the way down the line, between too much and too little. Because if more and more films tackle these topics in connection with hearing problems, they are usually treated from a dramatic point of view. We think of the recent Sound of Metal Where Black Box .

What is really very successful in We are made for each other, it’s the paradox in which his character Antoine finds himself, interpreted by Pascal Elbé himself. Indeed, even as this haughty and egocentric professor loses his hearing and withdraws even more into himself, Yet it is his handicap that will allow him to get out of his bubble. Then to open up to the world and finally to listen to others. In this sense, Pascal Elbé’s film perfectly illustrates the maxim of the philosopher Lume: ” Hearing does not mean listening: hearing is a sense but listening is an art “.

Antoine, who does not immediately understand what is happening to him, finds himself in extremely funny situations and causes hilarious misunderstandings. Everything is a source of laughter, but also to reflect. Since the way Antoine rejects his handicap, then accepts it with difficulty. Or evokes it with embarrassment and shame, and finally remedies it with hearing aids. And the empathy that Antoine arouses skillfully invites the viewer to wonder what he himself would do if this happened to him.

“Hearing does not mean listening”

Likewise, the reactions of those around Antoine are very fair and cause a lot of emotions. We laugh to see Francis (François Berléand), a teacher like him, take advantage of his best friend’s handicap to flirt. We smile when we see how our colleague Juanita (Claudia Tagbo) and Antoine are never on the same wavelength, even more since his problem. And we sympathize with the incomprehension of his companion (Julia Faure).

We are also touched to witness the rapprochement of Antoine and his mother Angèle (Marthe Villalonga) and the renewed bond with his sister Jeanne (Emmanuelle Devos). And one can not help but wonder if the director did not just have fun choosing the actress, like a nod to her role as a deaf young woman in On my lips.

But it is above all the meeting between two silences that is moving in We are made for each other. The silence suffered by Antoine finds himself confronted with the silence chosen by Violette (Manon Lemoine), her little neighbor. Both experience a parallel loss which weakens them and if for Antoine, it is the loss of hearing, for the little girl, it is the loss of her daddy. She faces her grief through silence, much like Mel Gibson’s youngest in The Patriot, the path to freedom. Violette therefore lives with her mother Claire (Sandrine Kiberlain) below Antoine’s apartment. They are lodged for a time with Claire’s sister, Léna (Valérie Donzelli), and her brother-in-law Julien (Antoine Gouy).

And the consequences of the handicap will therefore make Claire and Antoine collide with diametrically opposed characters and lives. Pascal Elbé’s camera, who also signs the screenplay, leaves Antoine from time to time to get to know Claire better. With her resilience, her hopes and her concern for Violette. But also with his conversations with his sister and his brother-in-law, or his attempts at romantic encounters.

Pay attention to the ears

Small downside, the film – also sponsored by the hearing aid professional cooperative Hear – risks disturbing people with fragile hearing or those suffering from hyperacusis. The director has indeed done a lot of work on the sound and took the party to modulate the noises of his film to better make the spectator feel what Antoine hears or not. His hearing difficulties are thus reflected in deaf noises and the overpayments due to the adjustment of his prostheses in increased noises, very quickly unbearable.

We are made for each other turns out to be a deeply human film, whose themes of disability, death and resilience are …