An uncharacteristically light offering from the prolific Leconte whose previous pictures (Monsieur Hire, Intimate Strangers) have shown an unerring feel for the dark underbelly of human emotion, this is yet another demonstration of the staggering versatility of Auteuil, surely the finest French actor of his generation.
He plays
Francois Coste, a Paris antique dealer whose success is rooted in his ruthlessness: when we first meet him he is working the widow at a funeral to get his hands on a treasured piece and he bids for a Greek vase he can't afford as an act of outrageous one-upmanship.
When his associates tell him (at his own birthday dinner) that they can't stand him - indeed that they have never been able to - business partner Catherine (Gayet) challenges him to prove he has any friends: he has 10 days to produce one or forfeit the antiquity.
There are no prizes for guessing where this is heading: he engages talkative taxi driver Bruno (Boon), a geeky pub-quiz champion who seems to get on with everyone, to show him how to make friends, with results that are both comic and revealing.
It's one of the legion of French films that lend themselves to an excruciating Hollywood remake and are always better done by the French. For my money, the climax, involving an episode of Who Wants to be a Millionaire (and the phone-a-friend option), is way over the top, but the film as a whole is kept aloft by the sparkling individuality of its two leads, who embody different aspects of the same problem. Bruno remarks at one point that being friendly with everyone is the same as having no friends at all. That's a perspective that is likely to get lost in transatlantic translation.
Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Dany Bon, Julie Gayet
Director: Patrice Leconte
Running time: 94 mins
Rating: M, low-level offensive language
Screening: Lido
Verdict: Sweetly comic yet pungent French comedy about a man who bets everything to prove he is not friendless is very diverting though a bit over the top at the end.
