According to Ropert, "The heroes are brothers who are not doctors like those we see in TV series. They are neither neurotic nor obsessive. They practice medicine in the most traditional aspect, but also the most idealistic way, that is by taking care of others.” Not only that, the brothers Boris Pizarnik ( Edric Kahn) and Dimitri Pizarknik (Laurent Stocker) share the same clinic and make their diagnosis, give their prescriptions and visit their patients together. But their otherwise calm and balanced lives were turned into a silent and subterranean conflict with the "irruption" upon the scene of Judith Durance (Louise Bourgoin) the beautiful, elegant but a bit emotionally restrained nightclub bar-tender mother of a diabetic but precocious bespectacled pre-teen Alice (Paula Denis). Judith, whose guitar playing husband Max (Jean-Pierre Petit) is separated from her and is now working at a gig in Italy, falls in love with Boris.The trouble is that the alcoholic Dimitri is also attracted to Judith, and as he told Boris when he discovered Boris seeing Judith alone for purposes unrelated to their joint practice, he wished there were two Judiths. This caused an inseparable rift between the two brothers to the extent that apart from the time when they were seeing patients when they had to be together, they no longer saw each other and even when they were together, they had to communicate with each other through an intermediary Charles (Serge Bozon) who had to go first to one brother and then relate back to the other brother what the first brother said and then hurry back to first brother to tell him what the second brother said. It was really comical to see the intermediary going back and forth. In the end, Judith, who still harbored hopes of a reunion with her husband decided to go with Boris.
In French "tirez la langue" actually means "stick your tongue out" which in the context of the film has a double entendre, one in the clinical context and the other in a romantic context. There is also another kind of balanced structure in the film: all official business happened during the day but all romance and personal matters occurred at night in the quaint 13th arrondissement of Paris, the China town area. The private distance between the two brothers is already skilfully suggested by the image at the start of the film when the two brothers communicated with each other in silence with merely body language and gestures through the windows of their respective apartments, separated by the intervening public space of the street below.
There's also another side plot in the film, Annabelle (Camille Cayol) the medical secretary of the pair is obviously in love with Boris, thus making another love triangle although this line wasn't developed. Thus we have both Boris and Dimitri in love with Judith, Judith still in love with Max, who suddenly reappeared after a decade after a long distance call from Boris that his daughter needed his presence for her cure and Annabelle in love with Boris. There's even a budding romance between Alice and a Vietnamese boy working at an icecream parlor in the area! The film ends with Judith finally deciding that she no longer loves Max and goes with Boris and the breakup of the brothers' joint practice when Dimitri went to the French Riviera to set up his own practice.
The film is Ropert's second feature. Her first "The Wolberg Family" (2008) also treats of complicated family relationship. To me, she seems a bit undecided exactly what it is she wants to do, whether she wants this second film to be a complete comedy or a slightly serious exploration of the complexities of human relations and how love can cause family rifts. Many possible lines of development are merely hinted at but never really developed eg. we see Dimitri attending an AA meeting. What has that got to do with his being unable to compete with Boris for Judith is never made clear? Similarly the obvious affection which Annabelle harbours towards Boris is again never elaborated. But there are obvious moments of cartoon-like humor eg. the scene where the two brothers had to have an intermediary to speak to one another and the way the brothers speak one after another to give their own diagnosis and their own prescription before the same patient. But it's not a bad way of spending 104 minutes in the dark and enjoying the lush camera work of Céline Bozon and some good music to boot.
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