Film Pick of the Week: French Lover - review by Yvette Huddleston
French Lover Netflix, review by Yvette Huddleston
This likeable French movie from writer-director Nina Rives is, a bit like Emily in Paris, one to watch more for the style than the substance – and for its photogenic locations in the Gallic capital.
The storyline owes a lot to Richard Curtis’ Notting Hill, starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, in that it features a love affair between a famous film star and an ordinary person and explores the various challenges that present themselves when trying to have a private relationship in the full glare of public attention.
Movie star Abel Camara (Omar Sy) has recently split up with his girlfriend in a humiliating break-up that has left him feeling down and has knocked his confidence. It doesn’t help that while he is looking to do more serious work with serious film directors his agent Camille (Pascale Arbillot) has booked him for an advert for a deodorant called ‘French Lover’. His mood is low and he is drinking too much and it is in this frame of mind that he enters a bar where waitress Marion (Sara Giraudeau) is working. They get into a bit of a spat when he accuses her of filming him on her phone (she wasn’t). Marion is feisty and tells him in a no-nonsense way that he is wrong. However, when her boss takes the film star’s side over his employee’s, she is fired.
Abel immediately regrets his behaviour and rushes after Marion to apologise, catching up with her at a bus stop and offering her a lift home in his expensive car. She agrees and so begins a sweet, tentative relationship. She explains that she is going through a divorce and that previously she co-owned a restaurant with her soon-to-be ex-husband who has banned her from the premises. Although, some compensation is that she has custody of their enormous dog. Marion’s modest ambition now is to restart on her own, by setting up a food truck – she just needs to learn to drive first.
While their lives and experiences are very different, they are happy in each other’s company, but then, in true romcom fashion, along come some barriers to their happiness, one of which is Abel being cast in a film opposite his ex-girlfriend Lena (Cindy Bruna) who seems to be interested in him again. There is nothing particularly original or surprising here, but it is all played beautifully by the two leads and supporting cast.