Sami and Julia meet by chance at a gas station. Four years later, she has a real job while he mostly hangs around, playing the guitar with his buddy Fernand, who is in his 70s. Sami’s difficulty in settling down and his lack of ambition irritate Julia, who decides to “take a break”. From then on, Sami tries awkwardly to win her back, with help from his old friend, who is always full of advice.

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A sweet and funny Swiss comedy aimed at thirty-somethings without spoiled bourgeois characters is sufficiently rare. With his first feature, Mathieu Urfer offers an ambiance closer to Inside Llewyn Davis by the Coen brothers than Hollywood rom-coms, and his movie is set in some of the most beautiful bistros in Lausanne. Urfer also wrote the screenplay and succeeds in adding enough irony to avoid being too precious and enough tenderness so that the audience can relate to the characters. The movie would profit from being less of a conventional romance, instead keeping the promise it makes at the beginning: to explore the distinctive solitude experienced by Sami and Fernand in a world that is turning without them, the distaste of the young musician for work as a value in itself, his refusal to grow up and the difficulties the couple has in finding their own rhythm in post-economic-crisis society. As played by Baptiste Gilliéron, who seems to be channeling Johnny Depp, Sami is both charming and exasperating. Which in the end is exactly the problem Julia has with him.