KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * *
Cast: Audrey Tautou, Gad Elmaleh
Director: Pierre Salvadori
Running time: 106 mins
Rating: M, low-level offensive language
Screening: Rialto
Verdict: A morally tacky French romantic comedy with zero chemistry between the two leads
The evergreen idea that has driven a swag of romantic comedies from Trouble in Paradiseto Pretty Woman is given a French twist here, but something gets seriously lost in translation.
Most of the problem is the absence of any perceptible chemistry between superstar Tautou and rising star Elmaleh (who had the title role in Francis Veber's excellent The Valet). The former, looking like an anorexic Catherine Zeta-Jones, plays Irene, a gold-digging waif who frequents the hotels of the Riviera preying on and living off lonely, rich older men. In the film's only scene with any fizz, she mistakes the barman Jean for a likely prospect and he plays along even when it means cashing up his pension plan to buy her dinner.
The problem with all this is that his attraction to her requires him to have the dignity and self-esteem of a hyena and the predictable outcome _ that both will discover love is more important than money _ is neither dramatically earned nor plausible when it arrives. She is slightly odious; he is more than mildly contemptible. Bring back Richard Gere and Julia Roberts.
