Un air de famille

If happy families are all alike, then movies based on plays about unhappy families tend to be the same in their formulaic staginess. Cédric Klapisch's adaptation of a theaterpiece by Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri (who also star) struggles to free itself from its origins, and it does manage some moments of poignance and absurdity, not to mention those little shocks of recognition that anyone with parents and siblings will register.

The occasion here is a family birthday get-together set in "Sleepy Dad's Café," a threadbare small-town bistro run by Henri (an anal and affecting Bacri). He's the less favored of two brothers; Philippe (an anal and unappealing Wladimir Yordanoff) is a successful and insufferable businessman who's just appeared on the TV news. The celebrant is Philippe's meek, long-suffering wife, Yolande (Catherine Frot); in attendance are the boys' shrewish mother (Claire Maurier) and their loose-cannon, over-30-and-unmarried sister Betty (Jaoui). Serving as objective point-of-view -- and sly erotic interest -- is Henri's mellow counterman Denis (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), whose insights into the clan's pathology are largely ignored, though a glint of liberation shines in the end.

Less than liberated is Klapisch himself. He shows inventiveness in his use of the single set (à la Robert Altman's Come Back to the Five & Dime Jimmy Dean) and in his periodic flashbacks to younger but not necessarily more innocent days. Yet the shadow of the proscenium makes one long for the serendipity of his previous effort, When the Cat's Away.

-- Peter Keough