Directed by Pascal Chaumeil Starring Romain Duris, Vanessa Paradis, Julie Ferrier, François Damiens, Héléna Noguerra, Andrew Lincoln 15A cert, limited release, 105 min
DOES SETTING your stupid comedy on the French Riviera inevitably make it "sophisticated"? You know what I mean. If, when planning a film concerning Martin Lawrence and a talking baboon, you move the action to Saint Tropez does Monkey Chat IIIthen get to play in cinemas that serve rice cakes and chai lattes? Well, it didn't work for Killers. That Ashton Kutcher comedy may have begun in Nice but it still ended up dumber than a sack of pigeons (or Dude, Where's My Car?).
Heartbreakeris a different matter. For a start, the film is properly French. Roman Duris, Gallic bristle-chin du jour, appears as the morally questionable male lead. Vanessa Paradis, haggard former gamine, pops up as the subject of his romantic advances. Monte Carlo appears as itself.
For all that Heartbreakeris, at its drippy core, only marginally less idiotic than the average American romantic comedy.
When the picture is remade by Hollywood – and such a project is, indeed, underway – expect reviews to eulogise the subtler, more nuanced French original. Don’t believe them.
The plot hangs around a neat (too neat), easily consumable high concept: M Duris heads a team of operatives – his snappy sister and bumbling brother-in-law complete the cadre – who, for a sizable fee, will break up any relationship. Following a prologue in Africa, they are hired by a businessman to stop his daughter (Paradis) marrying a seemingly flawless English businessman (Andrew Lincoln from Channel 4's Teachers).
Playing a genius with a weakness for Dirty Dancing, Ms Paradis – sulky, pouty, snappy – exhibits all the charm of an ambulatory veruca. Meanwhile Duris, posing as her bodyguard, gurns and flails like a man desperately trying to warn a distant ship away from looming landmines. Yet, for no other reason than that the plot demands it, the unlikely couple eventually fall into something that looks a little like love.
Rather than sleek and glamorous, the Monacan settings now, after a dozen “World Music Awards”, come across as more than a little vulgar.
The score appears stranded in the 1980s and there are a few too many scenes of women getting slugged in the face. Sophisticated is not the word.
