"Miss and the Doctors/Tirez la Langue, Mademoiselle" (The Guardian 30/05/14)

Miss and the Doctors (Tirez La Langue, Mademoiselle) ***
Dir: Axelle Ropert. With: Cedric Kahn, Louise Bourgoin, Laurent Stocker. 102 mins. Cert: NC

History has led us to expect all films made by erstwhile French critics to be bold statements for the ages, yet that tendency gets gently subverted in this rather sweet divertissement from Axelle Ropert, a not-quite-romcom about yin-and-yang paediatrician brothers and the sad-seeming single mother brought into their orbit by a diabetic daughter. The raw material’s there for a glossily conventional love triangle, but the angles are ever-so-slightly wonky: for starters, these characters are out among the concrete blocks of the péripherique, and Ropert isolates them further in single shots that add an element of Kaurismaki or Hal Hartley-like deadpan, hinting at how everybody’s diverging, not converging. Attractively photographed, designed and played, it remains at all points devoted – in that very French way – to the specifics of what its characters actually do in this particular place: not one for the ages, perhaps, but just distinctive enough to make for a pleasant matinee. 

Miss and the Doctors opens in selected cinemas from today.