Little White Lies/Les Petits Mouchoirs

RETURNING HOME from a club in the wee hours, coked-up party animal Ludo (Jean Dujardin) is blindsided by a truck and confined to critical care. Perhaps horrified by his accident make-up, Ludo’s friends all decide to go on holiday regardless.

Tensions soon surface. Restaurateur Max (François Cluzet) and chiropractor Vincent (Benoî Magimel) are having an awkward time of it. Both have travelled with wives and families but neither can forget about Vincent’s recent declaration of love for his older friend and host. He’s not gay, he says. He doesn’t want to sleep with Max. He’s just really, really into him.

Appalled and distressed by this outbreak of bromance, Max retreats and spends the entire vacation shouting and chasing weasels. No. Not cocktail cabinet metaphorical weasels. Actual weasels.

Elsewhere, star-crossed swain Antoine, ageing Lothario Eric and pot-smoking free spirit Marie (played by the director’s real-life partner, Marion Cotillard) bump into each other with no discernable purpose beyond swelling the ranks of a large, inexplicably diverse travelling party.

We have many questions. How did Guillaume Canet, whose deft direction made Tell No Onea breakout global hit, came to preside over this dreary, nonsensical dramedy? An orgy of clichés and implausibility, Little White Liesis an unwelcome, inferior Gallic riposte of Couples Retreat.

Actually, that's not fair. Even that Vince Vaughn movie thought to include vaguely people-shaped objects like "Kirsten Davies as Wife" throughout. Canet's script can barely muster such one- dimensional squiggles. We have no idea how this ill-defined mob of petite bourgeoisie ended up being petites vacancesbuddies. Their few dimly outlined attributes indicate little by way of common ground and plenty by way of irritants.

With no particular place to go and an awfully long time to make the trek (two-and-a-half hours- plus!) Little White Liesis reduced to ramping up the score around minor reveals and tangential developments. The effect runs counter to Joanna Hogg's similarly themed and infinitely superior Joanna Hogg Unrelatedand Archipelago. But where those recent films strived to understand and underline the dramatic importance of small things, Canet's film is trivial and entirely dependent on non-diegetic clues.

It’s all the swing of a sledgehammer and none of the impact. Reader, we didn’t buy it for but one of its 154 minutes.