European movie directors definitely don't approach love in the same manner as Americans. On the whole, "Deux" has every element you need for a love story. But it contains none of the fairy tale and/or dramatic aspects you usually find in an American flick. The result is maybe fifteen minutes in the beginning where you are misled into thinking that this movie is about the world of contemporary music, and then twenty minutes more where you don't have a sense of where you are going. But if you stick at it, finally you get the big picture and you don't regret it.
Gérard Depardieu is Marc Lambert, the manager of a pretentious music composer. He has an affair with the sexy real estate agent with whom he is trying to find a house in Paris.
Making love before thinking about marriage is no big deal nowadays. But deciding first to marry and only then trying to negotiate what the couple is going to look like after marriage (money, children, sex, lodging, fidelity, etc.) looks a bit like a tumble. That's where they lost me for a time.
But then you realize that this movie is about two rich people that have always been living an independent life and, as a result, don't know what love is, don't know how to deal when they really find it - and actually can't know whether they do fall in love. Hence the floating part in the middle.
Probably not to be recommended to people who do not have some experience of life. But people in the thirtysomething plus will find there something to chew on. By the way, Claude Zidi was 55 when he shot that drama, after directing such light comedies as "L'aile ou la cuisse" or "Les bidasses en folie". A 7-minus out of 10.
