Top 100 Most Anticipated Foreign Films of 2018: #52. Gustave Kervern & Benoît Delépine’s I Feel Good

Published on January 3, 2018

I Feel Good

Underrated directing duo Gustave Kervern and Benoît Delépine bring their peculiar sensibilities to their eighth collaboration together with I Feel Good, which also unites them with Yolande Moreau (one of their regular cast members), and is headlined by Oscar winner Jean Dujardin. After his parents finally force him to move out at the age of 40, the unambitious Jacques immediately embarks on a get-rich-quick scheme by exploiting the ‘low-cost’ avenues of the plastic surgery industry. Employing the help of his sister, who heads an Emmaus village, he lures folks in with promises of a better life, eventually taking his clients to a Romanian clinic, from which they will all return transformed.

Release Date/Prediction: To date, Kervern and Delepine are probably best known for winning an Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize for Le Grand Soir, or their Special Jury Prize win out of Sundance in 2009 for the equally strange Louise-Michel. Landing Cesar nods for 2010’s Mammuth, the duo were more recently in Venice in the Horizons sidebar with Near Death Experience (2014), as well as premiering their Saint Amour out-of-competition at the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival. With filming having commenced in August, I Feel Good will most likely appear in either Berlin or Cannes 2018 in one of the various sidebars (although the presence of Dujardin should assist in generating interest).

Nicholas Bell

Los Angeles based Nicholas Bell is IONCINEMA.com's Chief Film Critic and covers film festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Cannes and TIFF. He is part of the critic groups on Rotten Tomatoes, The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA), the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and GALECA. His top 3 for 2021: France (Bruno Dumont), Passing (Rebecca Hall) and Nightmare Alley (Guillermo Del Toro). He was a jury member at the 2019 Cleveland International Film Festival.