In this uplifting Gallic flick by prolific director Claude Berri, Camille (Audrey Tautou) is a cleaning lady living alone in the attic of an apartment building – so lonely, in fact, that she invites over a neighbour she randomly meets for a ‘picnic’ at her place. The neighbour in question, Philibert (Laurent Stocker), is a stuttering history-loving aristocrat. Soon enough, Camille finds herself moving into his spacious apartment, where she crosses paths with Philibert’s womanizing but wearisome flatmate, Franck (Guillaume Canet). Franck is a chef who’s exhausted by both his work and weekly long-distance visits to his fragile but adorable grandmother, Paulette (Françoise Bertin).

By distilling Anna Gavalda’s nearly-600-page novel down to the film’s short runtime, there’s elegance in the simplicity of Ensemble. But as a result, there’s little drama left on the way to its uncharacteristically banal resolution. Indeed, while Hollywood rom-coms are all too often guilty of unnecessarily spelling out everything for audiences, this film could use some enrichment in its characterization. For instance, I’d like to know more about Camille’s briefly-hinted, depressing family history behind her lonely and anorexic appearance; indeed, the film is so elliptical at times that we don’t even get to know how polar-opposites Franck and Philibert ended up living together.

That said, I guess I’m bemoaning the brief time we spend with these authentic characters only because the film has succeeded in making me care. Watching Ensemble is akin to eavesdropping on others’ lives in a laidback afternoon in a park: you don’t hear or see everything, and you’ll never get the full picture. And yet, when this quietly amiable film ends, I feel as if I’ve just witnessed 97 minutes of life in motion. Edmund Lee