C'est la vie

This hilarious French comedy was originally titled Le sens de la fete. For some reason, that was translated for the international market to C’est la vie. Who knows why. Perhaps to impose a more reassuring, because familiar, attitude.

For this is life, where the best planned parties run disastrous. A lavish wedding in a 17th Century mansion goes manically awry. The anatomy of a crumbling posh wedding evokes Altman’s The Wedding, of course, but the new film is not as biting. 

This aims for humour rather than satire. It soft-pedals any political themes.  The waiters’ spokesman fails to serve his comrades, when they’re required to wear heavy period costumes and wigs. The union leadership fails. The workers give in but without anger. Indeed, despite the event director’s furious tirade against his staff, the “magic” of the event takes hold and he abandons his plan to sell out and retire. 

Though the groom is an upper class twit, the film ignores class prejudice. The servants slip easily into the guests’ activities when it appears necessary for them to hide from a supposed labour inspector. The groom’s mother has a fling with the photographer with whom she has been squabbling. 

So, too, the romance that erupts between the seedy substitute singer and the director’s angry assistant. Their relationship moves from antagonism to love, with dramatic effect. It's enough to make the groom lose his grounding.

Through the evening even the event director loses then wins back the assistant he has been having an affair with. Happily, his wife calls to suggest they separate because she has her own new lover. It's a wedding, so there's romance -- and the groom -- in the air. The event, through all its chaos and frantic adapting, manages to achieve love on several fronts, to change discord into harmony. 

The ex-teacher waiter who still adores the bride is a familiar French type, the grammatical pedant correcting everyone. For all his punctilious language, though, he slops around in what look like pyjamas (“They’re hybrid”) and encourages the director, his brother-in-law, to leave his marriage. 

France’s immigrant class is acknowledged in the Sri Lankan dishwashers, who periodically joke about their new society but are happy to integrate. Passing references to their having their own band and a confusion between two kinds of flute set up the late-night jam between the booked band and the dishwashers’ that closes the night and the film on a note of high harmony. 
     This is a feel-good film. Not that there's anything wrong with that.