"...-neither hot nor cold-I am about to spit you out of my mouth." (the Bible)
With hindsight "Dieu vomit les tièdes" looks like a follow-up to "ki lo sa" ;like it ,it's among Guédiguian 's less accessible works .
The situation is the same as in "ki lo sa " ;four children swore that when they grew up ,they would meet again. But they would change the world , a world where there would be no poor anymore , a land of milk and honey ; in "ki lo sa " they remained " lukewarm" ,hence its horrible unexpected denouement.
It's no coincidence if the meeting takes place during the bicentennial of the French Revolution (1989): the first sequence lays the cards on the table: a plastered Darroussin does not want to talk about revolution ,the celebration is a deception.
The four characters ,who stayed in their garden in "ki lo sa" have to face the world, and in spite of their (discreet) rebellion against the society ,they remain "lukewarm" : one of them (Darroussin) is educated and has become a famous writer ,but he's lost all his illusions ; his three mates (Ariane Ascaride, Gérard Meylan,Pierre Banderet) try to come to terms with the adult life ,to no avail .
There's a thriller side :now and then ,there's a dead body floating on the sea, hints at drug-trafficking ,but all of this takes a back seat to the heroes' frames of mind; the whodunit does not interest the director and the criminal 's identity ,although revealed ,seems only a detail ,lost in the fireworks of the bicentennial of a revolution which won't be theirs.
Flashbacks from their childhood appear now and then ,but it's no longer the Paradise lost of "ki lo sa " : a sequence involving a dog is almost unbearable .
