Playing on nerves Pensioner Leonce Greeson has dinner on a Sunday evening with his young mistress and adult son. There is a persistent knock on the door, and the most unpleasant aggressive grandfather enters the apartment, brazenly declaring from the doorstep: “I came to get on your nerves!” Leons, much intrigued by the arrogance of the guest, does not escort him away, but enters into a dialogue with him that will last until the very end of the film and discover something in common between the two so different characters. This liaison is Nasif's housekeeper, an Algerian of 35, who provides services to both elderly people.
Both pensioners are secretly in love with her, although only one is willing to admit it. The trouble is that Nasifa has a jealous and pugnacious husband. This circumstance adds even more poignancy and, oddly enough, spice to the love perpendicular. The husband beats and humiliates his wife, but the elderly admirers of the soul do not like her. Therefore, “at work” she is provided with ideal conditions for rest – a double bed with a soft perine, coffee in bed, massage and other innocent joys, and, most importantly, the opportunity to fall asleep after night fights with her husband. So in a downtrodden immigrant woman begins to wake up a woman who feels more and more pleasure from being idolized and unrepressed.
As is usual in the films of the paradoxical Bertrand Blieu, the funny and the tragic go hand in hand, like a groom and a bride, and the absurd grows stronger from frame to frame. The play of the same name in the production of Bertrand Muir for many years did not leave the stage of Paris, and the performer of one of the two main roles Michelle Bouquet in 1998 even received for his role the prestigious theatrical award “Moliere”. The film was decided by Blie himself, and minimalist means. The proper volume of the film is given by the brilliant play of two superactors, Philip Noiret and the already mentioned Bouquet, who take a kind of revenge here for the age discrimination of modern cinema, where all the best roles are given to the young and beautiful.
After the unsuccessful “Actors” (1999), Blieu gave a lively and witty picture, which is almost not spoiled by purely French political allusions, not always fully understood by foreigners. The 64-year-old director with enviable ease managed to adapt the dense text of dialogues, the intimacy of history and theatrical convention to the specifics of cinema. Even when Death sneaks into the plot to take another terminally ill Nasifa with her into the world, it does not create any style differences. Old people with such fury are taken to defend their beloved that Kostlyava Kuma has no choice but to give in to their pressure - to give in to their grandfathers and have fun ...