Connemara: an adaptation that leaves its hunger (critic)

After their children after them Boukherma and despite the interpement of Mélanie Thierry, the work of Nicolas Mathieu continues to flower in the cinema without convincing more. The fault of the original material?

Alex Lutz has been with happiness for several years on several fronts for several years. TV (Catherine and Liliane), theater (only on stage brilliant) and cinema of course, in front as behind the camera, with in particular the brilliant Guy. And by attacking, after Their children after them From Boukherma, to a cinematographic adaptation of a novel by Nicolas Mathieu, Lutz launches a new challenge, surrounded by a beautiful cast (Mélanie Thierry and Bastien Bouillon in a role close to that of Go on a day at the top) but unfortunately misses the walk. Because served by a weak material, the director fails to give a singularity to this story to return to provincial sources against a background of adultery and nostalgia.

In Paris, Hélène no longer finds meaning in her work. She makes a burn out and moves. Back to Nancy, the square. One evening, in a parking lot, she finds Christophe, hockey player who made them all dream in high school, and which unlike her, remained here. Connemara is therefore carried by the breath of two opposite winds: on the one hand, a beautiful playground for the actors, and on the other, a disembodied scenario, where nothing seems to consider, of the social circles described to the adultery consumed. Lutz does not in fact never manage to erase this impression felt when reading the book that Mathieu overlooked his characters, creating by ricochet a awkwardly and involuntarily contemptuous look at provincial France. Lutz should have dared to go further in the betrayal of the original work.

Nicolas Moreno

By Alex Lutz. With Mélanie Thierry, Bastien Bouillon, Jacques Gamblin … Duration 1h52. Released on September 10, 2025.