21 Nights with Pattie

21 Nights with Pattie (21 nuits avec Pattie, 2015) is the French comedy by brothers Jean-Marie and Arnaud Larrieu, available to watch online on iFILM. At the peak of summer, Caroline, a forty-year-old Parisian, drives down to a small southern village to bury the mother she barely knew.

In the unfamiliar house she's taken under the wing of Pattie, a chatty local woman who loves recounting her affairs with the village men in lavish detail. Through those stories Caroline discovers a stranger version of her mother — a free-spirited lawyer who had quite a reputation with the men around the valley. Then, on the eve of the funeral, the body vanishes from its coffin, and the whole region buzzes with rumor as it prepares for the traditional midsummer dance.

Isabelle Carré and Karin Viard carry the picture in the Larrieus' signature register — a blend of irony, sensuality and gentle mystery where death sits right beside the sheer pleasure of being alive. The film screened at Cannes, and it'll land with anyone who loves unhurried French cinema, where the heat, the wine and human oddities matter more than the plot. Watch 21 Nights with Pattie (2015) online on iFILM.