Jean-Benoit Ugeux is presenting L'âge mûr [+lee también:
entrevista: Jean-Benoît Ugeux
ficha de la película] in a world premiere within the Arras Film Festival’s competition. This might be the actor and filmmaker’s first fiction feature, but it’s far from his first directorial effort, given his impressive back-catalogue of short films which have travelled far, wide and to great acclaim on the festival circuit, such as La Musique, which won the Bayard d’Or for Best Short Film in 2019, and Arbres, which scooped the Magritte Award for Best Documentary Short in 2023. Whether fiction or documentary, his movies are set apart by strong markers which also characterise this latest opus: a concern for family, a propensity towards long, static and often wide shots, and a taste for awkward characters who are often out of step with the people around them and whom he often plays himself, as is also the case here.

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L'âge mûr paints a delicate yet unforgiving portrait of Ludovic (Jean-Benoit Ugeux), an architect who’s just turned fifty and for whom almost everything is going well. Large-scale projects are falling into his lap in quick succession, his social life is thriving, and he’s just met Nathalie (Ruth Becquart), a funny and energetic single mum with whom he can easily see himself shifting up gears very quickly. But his interactions with Nathalie’s two daughters - one a pre-teen (Elisea Garrabos) and the other a fully-fledged teenager (Solan Martinez) – are far from a walk in the park. Likeable yet immature, Ludovic’s foundations begin to shake… Which is no small thing for an architect.

Played by the filmmaker himself, Ludovic is an infuriating character whom we can’t help but love. He’s too much - consumerist, loud-mouthed, immature - but he’s also incredibly touching in his clumsiness and in the way he so stubbornly refuses to succumb to solitude, which slowly seeps in as he seems to blend into the background. Teenagers, we know, are highly perceptive; like children, they have the ability to confront adults with their contradictions: the emperor has no clothes under their unfiltered gaze. Ugeux’s movie isn’t so much a film about other people’s children (like Rebecca Zlotowski’s movie) as about the strange relationships which can sometimes develop, without rhyme or reason, but which, for an unexpected spell, allow two people who should never have met to find or rediscover their path. L'âge mûr is a comedy with a very distinctive pace which also plays out on the sidelines of the action, in in-between moments and among the trivial aspects of everyday life, such as a burger wolfed down in a car park or a glass of fizz drunk alone at a party.

L'âge mûr was produced by Wrong Men - who were also in on the action for La Musique and Eastpak – in co-production with the director’s own company, Apoptose (Belgium), and Piano Sano (France), with support from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation Film and Audiovisual Centre’s Lightweight Production funding scheme. International sales are in the hands of Be For Films.