Let’s save the furniture: Irresistible Vimala Pons (review)

The recently Caesarized actress shines in this first feature film with sensitivity – and not without humor around the end of life and the family secrets that it sometimes brings to the surface.

Multi-talented. Scenographer and theater director, production designer César winner for L’Inconnu de la Grande Arche, Catherine Cosme makes her debut as a filmmaker here. It all started with one of those phone calls that no one likes to receive. The one in which Lucile, a photographer, learns that her mother is seriously ill and that she would be well inspired to leave Paris as quickly as possible to join her childhood home, her father and her brother and accompany her last days. Let’s Save the Furniture will therefore tell the story of this final stretch, the fatal outcome of which is beyond doubt, but where everything that had been swept under the rug for years will resurface, as one settles final accounts.

This title can be taken from different angles. Saving the furniture, in the sense of trying to maintain a damaged family unit. But also, in the first degree, in that of preventing creditors from seizing the assets of this house, Lucile’s mother having secretly contracted an impressive succession of debts to keep this family afloat. The only rock facing a husband a thousand miles away from all these practical considerations and children who are long gone. From this intimate and economic tragedy against the backdrop of the end of life, a sensitive film is born, never gloomy where humor constantly surfaces. The discreet staging is entirely at the service of its script and its actors, all impeccable. With Vimala Pons as a figurehead, in a register that extends her César-winning work on L’Affrontement. The way in which, physically, in small, sometimes barely perceptible touches, she embodies this character trying to resist the emotional whirlwind ready to overwhelm her at any moment commands admiration.

By Catherine Cosme. With Vimala Pons, Guilaine Londez, Yoann Zimmer… Duration: 1h26. Released May 6, 2026