Movie Review - Family Swap (2021)

Country: France

Language: French

Type of story: Multiple Magical Body Swap

Is the protagonist Transgender? No.

Sexuality: Doesn’t change

Nudity: Yes, brief

Smoking: Lots.

How I watched it: I rented it on Amazon Prime for $3.99 (Watch Here). Also rent at Fandango at Home for $2.99 (Rent it here).

When I last watched it: April 26, 2025

Next up is a French movie about a family swap. There is an American version of this on Netflix with Ed Helms but it has no TF/TG and not nearly as daring.  Lame.

My synopsis (spoiler-free): Le Sens de la famille is a story about a (relatively normal) dysfunctional family who, while on a trip to an amusement park, all randomly swap bodies. Now they have to figure out how to swap back while dealing with their bodys’ complicated lives.

* * Spoilers ahead * *

OK, so this is going to get confusing so let’s lay down the ground rules.  I’m going to use Secret Guild of Body Swappers rules to denote the souls of the family members.  I’ll use the first name to denote the body.  Let’s introduce the family before they swapped:

Alain (Franck Dubosc) - father, chief editor of a failing newspaper. 

Sophie (Alexandra Lamy) - mother, hospital nurse, having an affair with Christophe.

Valentine (Mathilde Roehrich) - teenage daughter.

Leo (Anaëlle Othenin-Girard) - teenage son.

Chacha (Rose de Kervenoaël) - 7-yr-old daughter.

Therese (Christiane Millet) - Grandmother, Sophie’s mom.

While at the theme park, after waiting for two hours in a line, one teen leaves and the other has to go to the bathroom. Alain refuses to wait any longer, and hops in the next boat. No one joins him.  While riding alone he unknowingly wishes to change families. 

From these first scenes we learn Alain isn’t really present and Sophie is cheating on him. We learn that Leo smokes pot, and Chacha is spoiled and steals a snowglobe from the gift shop.

At night while they sleep (These types of swaps always happen while they sleep, right?) They swap places.

The first transformation: A neon sign flickers.  Chaca stops sucking her thumb as Alain starts sucking his. 

Chacha is sleeping in the room with her parents. C is the first to wake up. She’s in Alain's body. She reaches over to her body and retrieves her stuffy.  This wakes Sophie up, who’s now in Chacha’s body. S convinces C that this is a dream and C goes back to sleep.

Meanwhile, Leo wakes up in Valentine's body. Here we get our cliched “man-in-woman’s body trying to pee standing up” scene.  He doesn’t make a commotion though.  

S then walks over to her own body and wakes them up, thinking A is inside. However, when Sophie wakes up and says something, S instantly identifies them as V. 

“Why am I in your bed?” V asks. 

“The bed is not the problem,” S replies. 

V realizes she is in Sophie’s body and begins screaming.

This wakes the whole family up.  Chaos ensues. V finds L in the bathroom groping her body. They decide to return home, cancelling Chacha’s birthday party. C, in Alain’s body, throws a tantrum in the hotel lobby worthy of a 7-year-old. 

So to recap: 

A is Leo

S is Chacha

V is Sophie

L is Valentine*

C is Alain*

(*) denotes gender swap

The second transformation: This one happens the next night, back at home. This time, Grandma Terese is part of it. The only person who doesn’t swap is S who remains in Chacha.

A is Sophie*

S is Chacha

V is Alain*

L is Therese*

C is Leo*

T is Valentine

(*) denotes gender swap

Does this Movie pass the Bechdel Test? No. It’s a little weird using this test on body swaps. Are we talking about the female character or the female actress? While there are a lot of female characters in this, the spirit of the Bechdel test is to make sure female characters aren’t just accessories to a male’s story. Well, the main story here is Alain’s job and Sophie’s affair, neither of which help pass this test.

Sexuality and Gender: I like that this movie wasn’t shy to provide gender swaps. What was refreshing was that it didn’t try any of the classic misogynist gender swap cliches.  This one really just focused on the family unit, their relationship, and their parent’s jobs.

Let’s go down the line since there’s a lot of swaps to cover:

L, at first winds up in Valentine. He provides the only gender swap cliche as he’s caught groping his boobs.  When he’s home, he charges his friend ten euros for him to flash him through the window. His second swap, he’s in Grandma. He charges his friend again - this time 20 euros - and doesn’t tell him whose body he’s in.  The friend gets the surprise of a lifetime as the old lady flashes him. Aside from that, L spends most of his time playing video games or smoking pot.

C, who is a 7-year-old girl, is first in Alain, then in Leo.  She’s obsessed with the fact she has a “weiner” now. When C is in Leo, actor Othenin-Girard really nails his performance attempting to be a 7-year-old girl.

A, who gets a chance to be his wife doesn’t really react to being in a woman’s body.  That is until he finds out his wife’s been cheating on him with coworker, Christophe (Artus). In a fit of anger, he asks to meet her lover. They wind up sleeping together. Again Alain doesn’t really react to this, but he’s willing to run away with Christophe anyway. I don’t think Alain is bi, but I think he’s not present in his life. He’s just coasting. The sex with Christophe is something that happens to him, not something he does. He’s willing to be bi just to escape his life.

V, finds herself in her Dad for the second half of the movie.  She dresses him up in fashionable clothes and slicks back his hair. I wish she would’ve shaved the beard though. This gives actor Frank Dubosc time to walk and dress femininely.  Not sure he sells it though.  

The most surprising character might be Roger, who is Therese’s fiance. While he’s making out with T, (who is in her granddaughter Valentine’s body), they call him out, and he reminds everyone he is in love with T regardless of her age and whose body she’s in - including Alain. Since Roger is a very old man and Valentine is an underage teenager, we’ll file this one in the cringe drawer.

The rest of the plot:  Really, the story focuses on the parents' lives and doesn’t dive into the kids' lives at all.  This might be a result of having too many main characters. We focus on Alain’s sale of his newspaper and Sophie’s affair with Christophe. It would’ve been cool if any of the kids went to school this week. The most we get is T (as Valentine) going to a party to relive her youth and make out with boys, much to the ire of V and Valentine’s boyfriend.

The Swap Back: Here’s what’s interesting and unique for a body swap movie - they don’t! They just keep swapping randomly. It's never revealed if anyone randomly ends up in their own body. It’s revealed to the viewers that the thing actually controlling the swaps is the snowglobe that Chacha stole from the gift shop in the very beginning.

A year later, they’re all in different bodies - and now a llama is included in the swaps! S is in the llama, smoking; and the llama is in Alain. But this final scene doesn’t really show us how these characters have grown. Are the kids in school? Who is doing the parents' jobs? A year of being someone else has to have an impact on a person right?

Random Thoughts:

• They waited two hours in line for that ride? Lame.

• Rhythmic Gymnastics? Where have I heard that before? Apparently when Valentine was a kid she was the worst girl in RG, but somehow managed to win 1st place once.  She brags about it often in the movie, until the truth is revealed - Alain bought it for her to help build her confidence.

• Rose de Kervenoaël, who was 10 while shooting this movie, did an excellent job being S. She had to act like an adult and had to participate in very mature dialog including marriage, sex, and affairs. “It’s not what it looks like. He meant nothing to me.” Plus she was often seen lighting a cigarette.

• Speaking of cigarettes. There was lots of smoking. Smoking is a French trope, right?

• L and C conspire to sell pot to old people in nursing homes. I suppose they needed something for the kids to do since they didn’t have them go to school.

• “It’s not what you think. It’s for my rheumatism.” - L after being caught smoking pot in his grandmother’s body.

• When S and A decide to break it off with Christophe, why did A do it? “I’ll be better coming from me?” 

• In the very last scene, we see that everyone is in different bodies. But we don’t see V in Leo. There is a moment, when C in Therese is complaining about her birthday, that Leo walks through the background wearing female coded clothes. It’s very brief. The director must’ve thought it was funnier to spend more time with S as a llama and the llama as Alain.

• At the ending credits, it says (in French) no child or llamas were smoking.

Overall impression: Overall it was meh.  I appreciate that this was a TG/TF movie, unlike that aforementioned American version. But it was rather shallow and didn’t really say anything about anything. Be careful what you wish for? Be present for your family? Honestly, I didn’t find this family dysfunctional in the beginning. They’re just kinda normal. Exhausted and checked out parents? Teens who do teen things? A spoiled 7-year-old on her birthday. Kinda normal. And it seems quite cruel for them to not swap back by the end. This movie spent too much time on laughing at the situation rather and deep diving into what this does to a family long term. Of course that’s par for the course for TG movies. 

It’s not worth $3.99, but when it eventually gets cheaper, it’s worth the 90 minutes.