Heiners Filmseiten – A Better Life (en)

A Better Life (Une vie meilleure)

German title: Ein besseres Leben
Spain title: Una vida mejor
Russian title: Замечательная жизнь
Original title: Une vie meilleure

Family drama – France, Canada
Production year: 2010
Movie length: 110 minutes

Director: Cédric Kahn
Writer: Cédric Kahn, Catherine Paillé
Cinematograph: Pascal Marti
Music: Akido

Movie description:

Yann, a cook, and Nadia, a waitress and mother of 9-year-old boy, decide to risk everything on the purchase of a restaurant. With plenty of talent, energy, love and dreams, but no finance of their own, they find themselves pushed into a jungle of financing and bank loans that quickly overwhelms them.
To bail them out, Nadia has to take a job in Canada, while Yann is forced to stay behind to save the restaurant. Together, he and the boy confront a relentless ava-lanche of creditors, an uncaring system and the daily grind from which there is no respite ... until Yann finally understands that his only chance of salvation lies in joining his lover – as well as reuniting mother and child – and following Nadia to Canada and a better life.

Yann trained as a chef and walks with the attendant swagger. It’s as easy for him to boast about his future plans as it is for him to pick up a woman in a bar – in this case, the beautiful Nadia. What he can’t seem to do is find the right job in Paris’ cutthroat restaurant world. As Yann falls into a passionate romance with Nadia, his dreams get bigger. He finds a grand old place in the woods that he wants to renovate and open for fine dining. He’s even ready to start a family with Nadia and her young son Slimane. What these two lovers lack is business sense. To finance renÂovations, Yann takes out a series of revolving loans that drag him into a spiral of debt. He and Nadia begin to squabble. Restless and impatient to find work of her own, she leaves France for a job in Montreal, promisÂing to send for her son soon. Of course, soon stretches out indefinitely. When Yann discovers that Slimane has shoplifted a pair of running shoes, he confronts the boy and tries to teach him a lesson, but even this attempt at discipline leaves both man and child in more dire circumstances. As he tries to be a father to Slimane and a success in his own eyes, Yann finds that debt and high principles can feed each other to desperate effect.

Boy Actors