Tralala review (Film, 2021)

Music always softens manners

During the preview of Tralala to Angoulême Francophone Film Festival with some of their performers, Arnaud Larrieu and Jean-Marie Larrieu explained the reasons for choosing their title. They simply have ” always had want to make a musical without all the hoopla, but with a little hoopla all the same “.

Their film, made six years after the original 21 nights with Pattie, is also one of the three feature films supported in 2019 by the CNC in the call for genre films. The other two projects selected in the musical, a genre honored after fantasy, science fiction and horror, and which we will soon see on the screens are The Great Magic by Noémie Lvovsky and Don Juan by Serge Bozon. A genre that certainly pleases, as we have seen with Annette by Leos Carax, and which we hope the spectators will not tire of too quickly.

The directors had two amazing good ideas in Tralala. The first good idea is to really blackmail the actors (none are dubbed). And the second is to have attached to each character and his singularity a talented composer. Several authors thus wrote the lyrics with the Larrieu brothers and composed the formidable music before the film, which the actors then brought to the screen with great accuracy. Thus Philippe Katerine composed for Mathieu Amalric, who plays Tralala, a whimsical hero. And when Amalric sings Philippe Katerine, with the same poetic and spicy intonation and the same hallucinated gaze, it is indeed the singer that we can guess behind the actor.

Jeanne Cherhal, for her part, composed ” with admiration and tenderness »For Mélanie Thierry (Jeannie). The latter said to herself ” still amazed that the Larrieu brothers called on her, who has such a bad ear and whose usual roles are so concrete and far from their fanciful areas “. Dominique A offered his nostalgic style to Lili (Josiane Balasko) and Etienne Daho his melancholy to Barbara (Maïwenn). We find singers who are also actors in Tralala : the singer-musician Bertrand Belin, a real revelation of the film, thus composed for his own character of Seb and the rap duo Sein performs the songs of the sons of Seb, Robin (Joseph Brisset) and Balthazar (Balthazar Gibert).

One life for another

Tralala Overall holds the road, thanks to the beautiful melodies which remain in memory after the film but also because of the scenario. The spectator thus becomes acquainted with Tralala and his miserable life in a squat in Paris. Free electron, haggard eyes and disconnected from reality, he wanders aimlessly in a noisy and dissonant Paris. He composes on an old guitar and seems to believe in the signs put in his way by his destiny. A fate that takes the form of an enigmatic young woman, Virginie (Galatéa Bellugi), who invites her for a drink by slipping “above all, don’t be yourself”.

The directors then make Tralala take a train to Lourdes, obsessed with the idea of ​​finding this young woman and understanding the meaning of her injunction. And it is from this moment that the Larrieu brothers can really make their mark and that the adventures of Tralala become an object of reflection and a source of comice. First of all because they make fun of the city and its miraculous folklore, a bit like Jean-Pierre Mocky in The Miracle. But above all because Tralala finds himself caught up in Lili (Josiane Balasko), an intrusive woman who thinks she recognizes him as her son who left twenty years earlier.

Doubt is judiciously established in the mind of the spectator: is he really witnessing a miracle? Is Tralala really this Patrick who left his girlfriend Jeannie (Mélanie Thierry), who has not forgotten anything about their antics and does not hesitate to remind him of it? This Patrick who cast so much shadow on his brother Seb (Bertrand Belin), even after his departure, that he never dared to tell his sons about it? Or is this story just a sham in due form to which Tralala is caught in the game, brought to cross on its way Climby (Denis Lavant), Barbara (Maïwenn) and Benjamin (Jalil Lespert)?

The film shows very well this way of slipping into the skin of a disappeared person to forget oneself., respond…