American Bistro is a 2019 comedy about a milquetoast accountant, whose perfect life is ruined when he discovers his wife having an affair with his boss.
There’s a moment about 15 minutes into Arthur Diennet‘s family passion project where the music swells in a sort of deep orchestral emotional cue … all while two men take an extended drunken piss off a balcony. To call it a bit confusing, at least for the message it delivers, is an understatement. Sure, it makes the right shift a few seconds later, but it’s symbolic of the film itself, one that works hard to earn the heartwarming punch to the gut it’s after while also – almost recklessly – trying to be a zany comedy. That means there are basically no rules as tears, vomit, bits of blood, homeless men in metal pot hats, and everything else get launched at the screen in hopes of something, anything to stick.
So there is Medor (Diennet), an older man, who while at lunch, discovers his wife is having an affair … with his boss. After he punches him through a pane of glass, he leaves her and spends the night with his nephew Edmund (Arthur Diennet), a college student with a bagful cash he got after quitting school and taking his tuition in bills so his parents won’t find out. Naturally, the two get ridiculously drunk, and in a stupor, Edmund gives Medor the money when he hears of his dreams to be a chef. Whoops.
Next morning, once sober, Medor takes the money and leases an abandoned junk pile of a restaurant leaving Edmund slack-jawed in shock when he realizes what’s happened to the loot. With nowhere else to go, he decides to help and well, it’s time to open a bistro.
It’s a little hard to wrap your head around what Diennet is after, the movie a strange mix of fantasy and um, I’m not sure what. It literally features a man who wears a cooking pot on his head and no one does anything about it; a daydream where a pretty girl is attacked and her shirt stripped off so that a ‘hero’ can rescue her; potential waiters have to run an obstacle course, which ends with them breaking through a cloud of smoke where Edmund stands with an AK-47 pointed at them. And fires. Yes, it turns out to be a paint gun, but it’s no less troubling. That’s just a few of the gags at play, all layered in a lingering heart-tugging piano score.
Okay, so it’s a comedy, with Diennet taking a few solid swings at small business and corruption, but it’s mostly toothless, even as a few good jokes land, like a slo-mo scene that ends with a stairwell in pitch-perfect timing. And both Diennets have some good chemistry, leading to a few very strong moments that definitely hit the mark, making it all the more frustrating for all the times it doesn’t.
Is it a family movie? Hmmm, not really. It’s laced with excessive hard-hitting profanity, sudden out-of-nowhere visual references to domestic violence and drug use, plus, well, an enormous red penis. So yeah, it’s for adults – and because so, I like a clever recurring bit about reflection – but American Bistro, for how hard it wants to be sentimental, is often too jumbled to make its point. Earnest, yes, to a fault, but ultimately, unfulfilling.