La Vie d'artiste

Three burgeoning artists – a writer (Podalydès), an actor (Dequenne) and a singer (Kiberlain) – all experience the difficulties of realising their dreams in this breezy and utterly charming debut film from writer/director Fitoussi. Whether it’s the cumbersome nature of the creative process, the moral imperatives that come with locating original ideas or the simple malice of strangers, all three seem to fall at every hurdle, but the pain of constant failure is given a rueful comic tinge by a witty script and sympathetic performances. Sure, there is nothing remotely revolutionary here, but if a mainstream British director were able to produce something that was at once so assured in its aims and broad in its potential reach, then we’d really have something to shout about.