Love is additional: a survivable romantic comedy (critic)

The Hakim Jemili- Laura Felpin duo sparks in C first film by Mourad Winter which is not afraid of anything, and especially not of the emotion or the shameless valve.

What is a good romantic comedy? The question has become thorny since #MeToo has rebatted all the cards, forcing the genre to modernize and update its point (s), under penalty of being in line. Still remains an almost constant: the duo of lovers in the making, who will sniff, hate himself, tame and finally love each other. A formula that can only actually work through a filmmaker’s look, a particular tone that would seek to move the lines. Be precisely what succeeds Love is additionalMourad Winter’s first feature film which adapts its own eponymous novel here, a nice bookstore success in the Marrade department.

A journey of nice loser, anis (Hakim Jemili, immediately endearing), null flirt, paralyzed by his fear of commitment and the constant injunctions to the coitus of his friends. However, he fell crazy crazy by Madeleine (Laura Felpin, hilarious seductive), solar and solid, at the locker room of a box where Anis tried to forget the death of his best friend, which occurred three years ago. What he does not yet know is that the young woman will force him to confront this emotional blocking that governs her life in the deprived.

Set out with the special mention of the jury at the Alpe d’Huez festival (we would have hoped for a little more strong price), Love is additional is a romantic comedy as we can see, on the lookout for emotion (the trauma of anise, soul to repair, serves as a red thread) but multiplying the spicy valves at a not believable pace. There is in this a surgical precision of the dialogue and an eye, a real, that of the cinematographer André Chemetoff (Dog Pound, the world is yours, Omar the strawberry…), which gives the film airs of urban epic. This formal ambition crosses a story populated by second unpaid roles (tranny youngest, inexhaustible friend on racist valves; François Damiens in a surprise stepfather …), around which Jemili and Felpin, obvious film of cinema, reigns. What is a good romantic comedy? Surely a film where we cry (a little), we laugh (a lot) and we love (madly).

Of Mourad Winter with Hakim Jemili, Laura Felpin, Benjamin Tranié… Duration 1 h 38. Released April 23, 2025