Benjamin Lavernhe

The Marching Band

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Jimmy and Thibaut together with Jimmy's band

Feelgood movies often lunge for the heartstrings. The Marching Band (originally En fanfare) does so too, but there is finesse here as well, and lovely performances, plus a plot that doesn’t always go where expected. And when it does go where expected it does it so unapologetically and majestically that you might feel like applauding, or even shed a little tear. It’s soppy. It’s lovely. And it tells an interesting and faceted story. First of all about Thibaut, an orchestral conductor who collapses on the podium one day, goes to the doctor and discovers he has leukaemia. He needs a bone marrow transplant but his sister cannot oblige because, he learns, she is … Read more

The Speech

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Cast photo with Benjamin Lavernhe centre

The nightmare of public speaking. The nightmare of a breakup. The Speech (Le Discours, in the original French) is a film about a man dealing with two anxiety-inducing situations simultaneously. Or not dealing with them. Number one: the speech. Adrien is a nice, typically anxious French guy at a family dinner so unremarkable that underfloor heating appears to be the main topic of conversation. Until his sister Sophie’s husband-to-be, Ludo, asks Adrien if he’d do them the honour of making a speech at their upcoming wedding. Adrien is instantly thrown into a funk and one strand of director Laurent Tirard’s film starts enjoying itself spinning fantasy “what could possibly go wrong?” versions of … Read more