40 year old lawyer Tony (Emmanuelle Bercot, winner of Best Female Actress in Cannes FF) falls in-love and swiftly marries Georgio (Vincent Cassel, brilliant as always), a hyperactive charming playboy, owner of restaurant and alpha male of his pack. They live, they laugh, they make love, they make a baby (after Georgio has a night time epiphany, that leads him to ironing shirts and making a passionate speech about reproducing). We fall in-love with their happiness, their ripe maturity. But this is just the exposition, as the rest of film’s two thirds are occupied with following the man’s shortcomings: a large palette of sometime authentic - sometime completely fake and illogic actions. Once the baby begins to show-up, Georgio becomes a crazed teenager, chasing women, booze and all that he left behind.
The abrupt character change is a tough sale, and it hold mostly due to Cassel’s natural charm. Although the focus of the story is on the feminine character, it doesn’t feel completely explored and is strangely (coming from a female director) stereotypic. As film critic Mike D’Angelo puts it: “She [Maïwenn] appears to side with Giorgio, who, when Tony says she’s weary of constant highs and lows and just wants something calm and steady, points out that, on an electriocardiogram, highs and lows signify life, whereas a steady flatline means that you’re dead.” Moments towards the end, where Tony is shown at her office, powerful in charge, receiving Georgio behind a big desk, appear for her character as a silly compensation. End scene saves the day: a meeting in face of school teachers, discussing their kid, is an opportunity to show that nothing has really changed.