Review by John P. Harvey.

Jean-François (Kad Merad) is at his wits’ end.  Lavishing the spoils of his position as C.E.O. of a multibillion-dollar hotel chain on his son, Louis (Audran Cattin*), he has created a monster.  Louis — hedonistic, self-absorbed, lacking in empathy, heedless of his effects on others — treats the world as his playground, as his entitlement as part of the jet set.  His playground includes the hotel chain, which, after suffering repeated episodes of Louis’s destructive partying, will no longer tolerate it and is about to oust Jean-François.

Jean-François, though, finally has a brainwave and devises a life lesson for Louis that also gives his advertising director an opportunity to indulge in a full-length film project.

And so it is that a traumatic event appears to send Louis back in time.  He awakes to find himself in an early-eighteenth-century village, where life is hard, the local manor lord is harder, and Louis’s new rung on the social ladder is the one nearest the cesspit.

Of course, life in such a setting is uncomfortable and entails bone-wearying work.  It’s also unpredictable and dangerous — even if in fact it is all a mockup, riddled with surveillance cameras in order to allow the production’s director to control a story arc designed to make Louis a better person.  And, naturally, not everything goes to plan!

The inventive humilities and humiliations to which this adventure in deception leads Louis — initially in order to survive, and finally in the name of love — to submit has had audiences laughing uncontrollably.

Whereas Kad Merad perfectly encapsulates the desperate care of a beleaguered father and Isabelle Carré his equally caring but more objective partner, your attention is drawn especially to Cattin, playing the part of the spoilt rich brat who learns a thing or two about real life, and the gifted comic actor Marc Riso, playing Louis’s eighteenth-century roommate, Bouvan, as Louis’s chief guide in this new life.

In a film with depths of deception offering challenges aplenty for the deception’s actors, extras, and crew and those who care for Louis, the acting throughout is superbly natural.  So beautifully constructed and acted is it that it makes dialogue almost unnecessary.

This wrinkle on time travel is sure to be a hit with audiences everywhere.

Screening at Palace cinemas.

* Not Clovis Cornillac, as stated originally; thanks to PJG for the correction.