COPACABANA, as its title doesn’t say, takes place somewhere between Tourcoing’s bricks and Ostende’s beaches. This is where Babou (Isabelle Huppert, present in almost every shot) has fun on Brasilian music, wears sari or learn sales techniques to sell apartment off to some tourists. Sometimes, you look, euh… crazy her daughter Esmeralda (Lolita Chammah), who chose a reasonable life by reaction to her mother, tells her. Crazy, no. But free, cheeky and generous ’til insecurity or thoughtlessness, yes.I wouldn’t take her as a model, analyses the director Marc Fitoussi, because her recklessness doesn’t serve any kind of moral message. This character is an outsider suddenly put in a so-called “normal” universe. Babou stands up to social efficiency obligations. But COPACABANA also denounces a professional environment that uses sidelined people to make them repeat a misleading promotional discourse. Today’s victims, they’ll be tomorrow’s executioners as well. The director resumes one of his themes, already explored in Bonbon au poivre, one of his first short films (2005) and do it via a Comedy genre, already approached in his first choral film, La Vie d’Artiste. Here, it sometimes yields to melancholy: Huppert’s eyes, reddened by her daughter’s rejection, the wrecked face of the actress after being laid off. COPACABANA pays tribute to all those adults who make their lives a real playground and give no place to mistrust and resentment sums up Fitoussi.
