16/05/2025 - CANNES 2025: Through the prism of the passage to adulthood, Martin Jauvat continues his tenderly humorous wanderings and his x-ray of life in the Paris suburbs

“Is everyone strapped in?” There are times in life when you get the depressing feeling that everything is slipping through your fingers, that you've got your back up against the wall, stuck in a paradoxical situation from which you absolutely have to do something to extricate yourself without really knowing what to do; and with the feeling of being weighed down with a total lack of confidence to try and change the formula. Such is the case of Corentin, nicknamed Sprite, the gentle anti-hero of Martin Jauvat's highly offbeat comedy Baise-en-ville, presented as a special screening in Critics' Week at the 78th Cannes Film Festival. Having already visited the Croisette (in ACID in 2022) with his first feature Grand Paris, the French filmmaker takes up the thread of his existentialist sociological deciphering of everyday life and the complicated hopes of young people in the Paris suburbs, with his self-assured comic cheek (at the crossroads of realism and an ultra-colourful cartoon spirit).

It all starts with Sprite's mother confiscating a bathtub drain in an attempt to shock the sweet, moody 25-year-old (played by the director himself) who came back to live in the family bungalow, idle and without a plan or prospects for the future. Threatened with being kicked out of the house, Sprite suddenly sets out to find work and avoid being “the intern's intern”. However, squaring the circle isn't easy, because "to get a job, you need a driving licence, but you have to find a job to pay for the licence". One thing leads to another, in bizarre circumstances and with the help of his brother-in-law Walid (William Lebghil), and here he is, embarked on exhausting peregrinations punctuated by driving school sessions with Marie-Charlotte (a colourful Emmanuelle Bercot) by day, a job with Ricco (Sébastien Chassagne) for Allo Nettoyo, a micro-company specialising in cleaning up parties at home, and endless periods of public transport. And in the midst of it all, the shy Sprite, still stuck in the football shirts of his childhood ("you can't drive, you can't fuck, you can't dance, you can't do anything!") would also like to find love...

"Give a man a fish and he'll eat it one day, teach him to fish and he'll eat it every day." An amusing four-day initiation tale about the need to express one's emotions, Baise-en-ville spins metaphors (dolphins: “the depths are their kingdom and yet they have to keep coming up to the surface to breathe”) in a wildly playful atmosphere (at a very controlled tempo nonetheless), pushing the humour sliders without any hang-ups and relying on the alchemy of duos of performers who give it their all. It's a delightful, good-natured, unpretentious, libertarian atmosphere on par with the “baise-en-ville” (translating to “have sex in town”) of the title, that “little satchel, usually with a strap, carrying the essentials for a night out”.

Baise-en-ville was produced by Ecce Films (also handling international sales) and co-produced by France 2 Cinéma.

(Translated from French)