Stuck Together

In STUCK TOGETHER, under the pressure of pandemic lockdown, espousing truths, half-truths, and outright ignorance about Covid, the inhabitants of a Paris rental building work out relationships with spouses, children, and neighbors. As a 10-year-old narrator describes all the things he loves about his dad, Tony (Francois Damien), it becomes clear that Dad is a racist, misogynist jerk who drove away his far more reasonable wife. Tony, owner of the building and other business as well, can't speak a sentence without offending some person or group. And his admiring son, we understand, is learning to be just like dad. But the tenants are equally terrible in their own ways. Jumping to racist conclusions seems built-in. The new "North African" subletter keeps to herself by day as the other tenants complain she's breaking pandemic restrictions by going out every night. Samuel (Tom Leeb), the online fitness instructor, pushes his pregnant wife Agatha (Alison Wheeler) out of their tiny apartment when he livestreams so his female followers won't know he's married. Martin (Dany Boon, also the film's director) rabidly sprays hand sanitizer in his mouth and is in a constant state of panic over invisible germs everywhere. When Claire (Laurence Arne), his attorney wife, visits a client in jail, he won't let her back into their apartment. Yet he's fine with letting his daughter play outside with a neighbor boy and he's fine with standing inches away from others in the building. The owner of a shuttered bar sells her powerful pear liquor as a hand-sanitizer to get by while the building's janitor Paolo (Jorge Calvo) worries about his wife, in the hospital for weeks with Covid.