Se sposti un posto a tavola

Cinema has addressed this subject several times, this being a good habit for any romantic plot. The French comedy If you move a seat at the table focuses on four couples using the “what would have changed if…” ploy.

The game has been seen in two well-known films, the English Sliding Doors and the German Lola runs, but the path travelled by the comedy of newcomer director Christelle Raynal does not have dramatic or action implications like the titles to which it is inspired.

Starting with a wedding dinner, the story tells the sentimental evolutions of four men and four women seated at a table during the ceremony. Depending on the seats chosen and the conversation with a different seat neighbour, the future of the characters can be very different. If you move a seat at the table, it stages three different developments, about 20 minutes each, starting from there each time, from the table and from the combinations of seats.

Not as original as it would like to be, the film focuses on the comic front by creating very caricatured characters, such as the unfaithful doctor and the exhausted wife or the snobbish gallery owner and nymphomaniac wife. But basically all eight elements try to appease their sentimental-sexual cravings, just as the director hardly quenches the desire to reach the happy ending. For everyone.

The film tears a few smiles, but France has accustomed us to comedies of a very different depth, both intellectual and purely comic. Romanticism does not stand alone the whole story which, despite the good packaging, bores a bit without fate being able to intervene in any way.