Though recently tapped for Cannes’ 2026 Opening Night with LA VÉNUS ÉLECTRIQUE/THE ELECTRIC KISS, French writer/director Pierre Salvadori has a low profile in the States. Too French? Too light? Too mid-list? But if COUR is anything to go by, we’ve been missing a trick. From desciptions, this seems considerably darker than his other work, though it doesn’t start that way. Gustave Kervern stars as a shambling, disheveled 40-something, a severely depressed substance abuser who walks out of a concert gig (he’s a rock guitarist) and into a job as live-in janitor at a slightly worn apartment house. Hired on the spot by an unconcerned/disinterested Catherine Deneuve who’s going thru her own mental crisis, sloughing off longtime volunteer commitments to obsess over minor building issues. And it seems every tenant in the building on the cusp of a nervous breakdown. Yet without qualification for either building maintenance or mental counsel, Kervern’s calm manner of letting time take care of problems satisfies the co-owners and all turns out well. But wait! That’s a likely Stateside version of the film had it gone thru Hollywood Development Hell. Salvadori having none of it. Instead, at nearly every turn, the story takes the darker path with ingrates using Kervern for their own purposes, tenants over-loading him with tasks, and mental fantasy taking hold of Deneuve’s increasingly fragile state of mind. A spontaneous visit to her childhood home with a by now poignantly chummy Kervern a particular (and dramatically brave) horror. There’s resolution, of a sort, but this is hardly Handyman Mary Poppins by the time Kervern checks out.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Deneuve, quite rightly, nominated for a Best Actress César. No grandstanding, no begging for sympathy, nothing taken for granted.
DOUBLE-BILL: Salvadori’s best received film (at least his most nominated) is EN LIBERTÉ! (THE TROUBLE WITH YOU) which followed this in 2018. (not seen here)
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