Miss and the Doctors

Miss and the Doctors (original title, Tirez la Langue, Mademoiselle) is a comedy-drama from French writer-director Axelle Ropert. The story of a love triangle, it is about two brothers, Boris and Dimitri (Cédric Kahn and Laurent Stocker) who are both doctors and who share a practice in Paris. Independently of each other, they both fall in love with a young woman, Judith (Louise Bourgoin), who has a diabetic daughter (Paula Denis). Ropert traces these developing relationships and the complications that ensue.

Axelle Ropert adopts a very muted, elliptical and somewhat distant tone. The plot plays out through a series of coincidences, which seem to be intended to stretch our disbelief, and moments occur off-screen that could have been fruitfully played for either comedy or drama. We are shown very little detail and when Boris and Dimitri both fall for Judith, we are never sure why. There is a suggestion that Boris and Dimitri may be so in need of a romantic relationship that they don’t care who they fall for, but this comes to nothing. And while it does initially seem that the film has some kind of strategy, that all will make sense as it goes on, a totally flubbed ending ultimately suggests that the confusion is simply down to bad filmmaking.

The movie is passable, but it is rather vague and more than a little stiff. The three lead actors suffer with under-developed characters and the script offers ample backstory but no real development. The direction is fine, though some scenes are badly thought-out – one among them places an odd focus on a goofy organ grinder, who seems important but turns out not to be. Ultimately, the film has little going on, beyond a very traditional story told lethargically.

Matthew McKernan

Miss and the Doctors is released nationwide on 20^th June 2014.

Watch the trailer for Miss and the Doctors here: