Nothing to declare

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Movie
German title Nothing to declare
Original title Rien à déclarer
Country of production France , Belgium
original language French , English
Publishing year 2010
length 108 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 12
Rod
Director Dany Boon
script Dany Boon
production Jérôme Seydoux ,
Eric Hubert
music Philippe Rombi
camera Pierre Aïm
cut Luc Barnier
occupation

Nothing to declare (original title: Rien à déclarer ) is a French comedy film from 2010 . Dany Boon directed and starred alongside Benoît Poelvoorde .

action

At the beginning of the 1990s at a Belgian- French border crossing . The customs officers on both sides look at the people with ignorance and condescension, but especially at the customs colleagues on the other side of the border. The Belgian civil servant Ruben Vandevoorde stands out from this, a nationalist who hates the "French" from the bottom of his soul. He does not shy away from moving landmarks or from excessive customs control measures against French cross-border commuters. Both sides look forward with apprehension to the implementation of the EC internal market from 1993 and the Schengen Agreement , which provides for the abolition of border controls. Not only will they lose their previous job, the guests will also be missing in the bar in the border village.

Ruben's sister Louise, of all people, has a secret relationship with the rabbit-footed French border official Mathias Ducatel, with whom her brother often argues. She is faced with a decision between Mathias and her nationalistic family. With a heavy heart she separates from Mathias. When the barriers fell away, binational mobile wanted patrols were set up for the border area. From the Belgian side, Vandevoorde is designated as a punishment for the job. On the French side, Ducatel volunteered. He wants to try to make peace with Ruben in order to get the family's approval for his marriage to Louise. A gang of idiot drug smugglers provides them with work, especially since their boss bribed the couple who run the border bar in order to get the police plans. Under the impression of joy and sorrow at work, a friendship actually develops between Ruben and Mathias. Ruben even invites Mathias to spend New Year's Eve with his family - disguised as a Belgian border guard. There, the lovable Mathias tries with all his might to win Louise's heart for himself. Louise only manages to hide the relationship with difficulty.

Shortly afterwards, Ruben, accompanied by Mathias, visits his confessor, who has always held his chauvinism against him as an obstacle to salvation, to show that he has made friends with a Frenchman. When the pastor remarks that it is not a good thing to forge friendships just to be admitted to Paradise by God, Mathias admits that he, too, did not do this unselfishly; he talks about his relationship with Ruben's sister. With Ruben all fuses then blow and he runs after Mathias shooting. This takes refuge in Louise's apartment, where she gives her brother the choice of shooting them both or accepting their love. Rubens anger subsides and Mathias becomes his brother-in-law.

A Renault 4L was tuned to look like this in the film

background

Dany Boon's third directorial work is nothing to declare . He has known the Belgian-French border since he was a student. The idea for the script arose while passing empty buildings and unused border posts during the marketing work for his film Willkommen bei den Sch'tis , which in 2008 became the most successful French film to date. Media archives and discussions with customs officials provided the material for the film.

The film also addresses the Belgian accent of French. In the German dubbed version, the (northern) French speak High German and the Belgians, if they do not also speak High German, roughly the "Sch'ti dialect" that the northern French spoke in the previous film.

criticism

The German criticism drew many comparisons to Boons Welcome to the Sticks , looking in Nothing to Declare occasionally a worthy successor, but more often a "second infusion"; or she didn't find it as original as its predecessor. The film has a user rating of 6.3 / 10 points in the IMDb and on Moviepilot .

For Ray it is "a heartwarming film", which with its "charm and effective punchlines" and in an "enchantingly comical way" makes you laugh and think. Others found it "sometimes hilarious" or noted some amusing "mercurial silly moments". The taz said that Boon experimented insecurely in secondary lines and not even convinced of it and sometimes works with "quite coarse humor". According to epd Film, Boon was riding “his comedic starting situation this time with annoying monotony to death” and repeating the same punch lines . The script is weak, not fully developed. The NZZ identified only ten verbal and five visual punchlines in the "slow-flowing", undemanding comedy. The Tagesspiegel spoke of the effort not to overwhelm the audience and of a "tiring clarity".

As a performer, Boon confined himself to a "stupid permanent grin", while Poelvoorde was partially praised. The latter's game reminded several critics of Louis de Funès , but he does not come close. The judgment that Poelvoorde was developing tantrums "into an art form" was contrasted with views that his character was overdrawn and, with its radicalism, did not fit into the harmlessly humanized worldview of Boon's comedies. The world said about the character played by Poelvoorde: "One likes the narrow-minded villain Ruben so much because he arouses nostalgia in a strange way for a Europe that wasn't quite as dipped in a cross-border uniform sauce as it is today." According to Die Zeit , Dany Boon hardly thought of anything about the Belgian-French relationship; the jokes were almost entirely at the expense of the Belgians. The taz found that Boon played amiably and "at first glance he is also the film's most popular figure", but that "there is always something condescending about his friendliness" towards the Belgians. While Ray attested that the director handled sensitive issues such as xenophobia skilfully, the Tagesspiegel wrote : “The concept of reducing racism to the absurd based on the Franco-Belgian example seems absolutely conclusive. On the other hand, this also allows Boon to deal with the painful subject in a rather shallow way. ”After all, he is not so naive as to believe in a possible conversion of the hater. epd Film was disappointed that the film is not set in the Maghreb or the Parisian banlieue , which would have offered more potential. The nostalgic attitude has a reactionary undertone.

Review mirror

positive

Rather positive

Mixed

Rather negative

negative

  • epd Film No. 7/2011, p. 53, by Kai Mihm: Nothing to declare

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Clearance certificate for nothing to be declared . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , May 2011 (PDF; test number: 127 066 K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for nothing to be declared . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ Welcome to the Sch'tis at filmstarts.de
  4. ↑ Press booklet “Nothing to declare” ( memento of the original from November 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 449 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nichts-zu-verzollen.de
  5. ↑ a b c Ines Ingerle: Nothing to declare / Rien à déclarer . In: Ray , No. 7 + 8/2011, p. 58
  6. ↑ a b c d Wilfried Hippen: Welcome to the Camemberts . In: taz , July 28, 2011, p. 24
  7. ↑ a b c Ralf Blau: Nothing to declare . In: Cinema , No. 8/2011, p. 42. When accessed on September 18, 2011, the text available on the Internet matched the printed version.
  8. ↑ [1]
  9. ↑ [2]
  10. ↑ a b c d e Martin Schwickert: The Borderliner Syndrome . In: Der Tagesspiegel , July 28, 2011, p. 27
  11. ↑ a b c d e Birgit Roschy: Komischer Grenzverkehr . Time online , July 27, 2011
  12. ↑ a b c d Kai Mihm: Nothing to declare . In: epd Film , No. 7/2011, p. 53
  13. ↑ a b c Christoph Egger: Rien à déclarer . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , June 9, 2011, p. 51
  14. ↑ : Matthias Heine "Nothing to Declare" Little joke in traffic . In: Die Welt , July 28, 2011