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Death means a funeral and sometimes seeing people you'd rather avoid. The inevitable happens when harbored guilt, anger, secret love affairs, failures and passion all come pouring out as people search for answers and in some rare cases, a way to forgive. If the characters look familiar (and you've seen Avenue Montaigne recently), it's because they are. Claude Brasseur plays the patriach-transvestite-nightclub owner whose death brings everyone together (he was the dying art collector in Avenue Montaigne). Christophe Thompson, son of Danièle Thompson, co-wrote the script. The feel is very similar because ultimately the high world of art, theatre & music in Avenue Montaigne has been transposed to a cabaret bar in Nice where there might be more bare breasted women, but the worries and fears are basically the same. Smart dialogue combines effervescently with the magnetic onscreen presence of French stars. The magnificent and sharp-tongued Catherine Deneuve is devilishly delightful as the one everyone tries to avoid in the film, and her banter with has-been magician Gérard Lanvin is a treat. Sultry Emmanuelle Béart holds her own as a cabaret singer looking for love while Valérie Lemercier (who played a self-involved actress in Avenue Montaigne) is hilarious as the comandante stage manager of the nightly burlesque show at the nightclub. Geraldine Pailhas and Michael Cohen round out the cast nicely as half-siblings trying to make sense of the mess left behind by their transvestite godfather. Though it takes a bit to work out all of the relationships among the characters, Family Hero is satisfying because of the way familial problems are resolved (or at least dealt with). To do that in a nightclub in Nice is even better…
 
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