What's in a Name (Le Prénom) (名字)

"What's in a name" ("Le Prénom" literally "First Name")  written by Matthieu Delaporte, and co-directed by him and Alexandre de La Patelliere and starring Patrick Bruel, Valerie Benguigui, Charles Berling, Guillaume de Tonquedec, Judith El Zein and Francois Fabian, is a powerful drama having at least two of the three Aristotelian unities: unity of time and unity of place.

It started at a hospital and ended there but the greater part of the drama enfolded at the middle class home of a stressed mother of two, doubling as high school teacher, the Jewish born Elisabeth (Valerie Benguigui) and wife of Pierre (Charles Berling), a self-opinionated intellectual but apparently quite popular  professor of French classical literature at the Sorbonne. Elizabeth's highly successful and self-assured estate agent brother, Vincent (Patrick Bruel) a smooth talker has just been to the hospital to check if the baby his wife Anna (Judith El Zein) is carrying is a boy or a girl but from the ultra sound picture, it appears that the embryo has a penis. He's overjoyed and announces it to the party. But he wanted to be dramatic and told them that he has some good news and some bad news. The good news was that he got a son but the bad news was that he just lost him. The others commiserated with him. When they all seemed to have lost spirit, he told them that it was all a joke! The others breathed a sigh of relief and they got to talking about what kind of first name the boy would have. He asked them to guess. They tried lots and lots names but none got it and they asked for a hint. He agreed and said it started with the letter "A". They continued guessing. None got it right. Finally, he announced it: Adolphe like Adolph Hilter. This got to the nerves of Pierre and a very heated argument followed along with some broken furniture. Then he announced that it was another joke! To relieve the tension, Elizabeth suggested that they pay some attention to the Moroccan dish she spent hours preparing and to change the subject.  And the attention shifted to the apparently very secretive love life of their long time family friend from childhood, the sensitive and gentle Claude (Guiilaume de Tonquedec) a renowned trombonist for a Parisian orchestra who was the first to arrive with some flowers for Elizabeth and a bottle of good wine, but nothing compared with that brought later by Vincent, an extremely expensive wine which is a gift from one of his clients. But at the end of the discussion of what he is doing with his "girl friend" which everybody except Anna ( who had seen them at a swimming pool) was shocked to learn that he had fallen in love with Francoise, the mother of Elizabeth and Vincent! In the course of the discussion which rapidly grew into quarrels, lots of things surfaced: the hidden jealousies and envy between relatives, years of frustration of Elizabeth against her husband, how they all suspected that Claude was gay etc. The irony is that, when Vincent and the others went to the hospital for the delivery of the expected baby, it was a girl! But Vincent  quickly decided on a name for the surprise baby: Françoise!

The cinematography was competent, not something one would rave about but the cut and thrust of the dialogue leaves one breathless as one shocking revelation followed another and the acting by Berling, Bruel and de Tonquedec and Benguigui was simply superb. I haven't seen such a good drama for I don't know how many years. They portrayed the dynamics of how well meaning jokes might turn bad and the sudden explosion of deep seated and long brewing feelings of petty jealousies, suspicions and frustrations beneath the taken for granted thoughts and feelings amongst family and friends in such colorful but natural flow of their verbal ripostes that there's really little one can say or do except to give them the thumb-ups that they so richly deserve. An excellent drama on celluloid with some well chosen trivial but character/mood revealing details and punchy dialogues which didn't really exploit the full potential of the camera and music!