At last, we saw a comedy in this year's Athens International Film Festival and thank God (pun intented) it was quite funny.. at least in the beginning. Le tout nouveau testament is one of those films that one might call a dramedy (a serious film with some comedic moments or a comedic film with a more serious tone). Either way, it is not a laugh-out-loud comedy but a really funny one in any case.
According to the film, everything we know about God and everything we've read in the testament is wrong. God (Benoit Poelvoorde) is just a guy who lives in Brussels with his wife (Yolande Moreau) and his daughter Ea (Pili Groyne) who is also the narrator of the story. God is a terrible, horrible man who beats his daughter, abuses his wife and sits all day long in his pyjamas watching sports on TV or spending time in front of the computer monitor from where he creates numerous disasters as what amuses him the most is the people's unhappiness. His son, Jesus has left home not being able to stand his father's behaviour and has lived as we already know from his Apostles' gospels.
Ea, wanting to take revenge on her father for his inexcusable behaviour, leaves home too, but before she does, she hacks her father's computer and she sends an sms to every person in the world informing them of their date of death. This changes things down on earth as people react to the news in many different ways. After all what would you do if you knew how many days are left for you to live? After she escapes, Ea tries to find six more apostles to make a brand new testament.
Le tout nouveau testament is a film that has some very good ideas and a decent premise. There are many scenes that are downright funny and satirize our small unlucky moments in life, such as why the queue next to us is the one that seemingly moves faster, or how a piece of toast will fall from our hands and will almost always land on the side that has jam on. It also has some touching scenes that present the internal questions we all make when we think about life and its vainness. But soon, the film starts to get tired of itself and even though it is pretty good up until the middle, it loses a bit of momentum and ends in a rather bittersweet tone. Don't get me wrong, I had fun watching it, but I felt like there were some moments that dragged a little, and that there were also ideas or people (such as God himself or Catherine Deneuve who has a small secondary role) that were left underused.
Le tout nouveau testament was shown on the 5th day of the AIFF, Monday September 28th .
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