Sex, Lügen und Intrigen

France has been making the same old films: Group of close friends or people going through ups and downs. That's it. Such as "Le gout des autres", "Les Bronzés", and "Mille Millièmes".

As a Linguist, I found Helena Bonham Carter fairly good in this film. Her french was good but not excellent. There is something about actors that I find pitiful when playing in foreign films or speak a second language; They don't truly speak it fluently and so therefore when playing a role such as Carter's, one can tell that she hasn't truly digested the French language and the consequences are that when one hasn't perfected a certain language, one becomes over the top. One can see that Carter is a bit self-conscious about her linguistic skills and in this case she ends up being theatrical and clownish. I admire and revere her as an actress but stick to english speaking films.

The whole cast does fairly well but it's the plot that doesn't fare well. Marie Trintignant shines and look for Jean Claude Brialy as the fed up fashion designer. If you watch "Robert & Robert" you will see how truly gifted this actor is.

Episodic film dealing with the lives and loves of a group of young professional Parisians. Helena Bonham-Carter in her first French film is good and speaks the language like a native. Romane Bohringer is very sexy as usual, and Elsa Zylberstein and Marie Trintignant are very amusing. The male characters are less interesting and rather two-dimensional, with the exception of screenwriter Paul (Jean-Philippe Ecoffey). The film concentrates mainly on the on-off relationship between Ada and Paul and the effect that the young Lise has on both their personal relationship and Ada's professional career. The film is an improvement on Dugowson's previous "Mina Tannenbaum", but the large number of characters makes it difficult to get emotionally involved with, and care what happens to, any of them.

I very much enjoyed this delightfully unusual film. The French are noted for their style, their self-assurance, their savoir-faire and savoir-vivre, and French films from Rohmer to Sautet present us with a world of elegance, intelligence, and charm. The inner angst of this world is normally shown in dramas like Un Coeur en Hiver or Une Femme Française, and there is no question that the French are, in fact, very self-aware and conscious of their own limitations. Portraits Chinois, however, uses humour and wit to convey the inner lives of its characters, their fantasies, the lies they tell themselves, and the ways in which they resolve their (mainly romantic) dilemmas. There isn't a false note anywhere, and there are several very fine performances, among which Helena Bonham-Carter's stands out. Her French is nothing less than flawless. It's just the sort of film that is worth re-watching once one knows how their stories pan out. The reviewer who thought it was awful rubbish obviously hasn't watched much French cinema.

This plays like a French Woody Allen movie. Even the music is reminiscent of a New York scene. And, of course, they talk and talk and talk and talk and flirt and talk and talk and talk and make love and talk and talk and talk and jerk off at the office and talk and talk...

You get the idea. Heck, you can even hear their inner dialogue and see the fantasies they're picturing in their heads at any given moment. By the first 10 minutes, though, you wish they would just get it over with. I only lasted through about half of the movie, then I just got too bored.

AND, for about a quarter of the movie, all this talking is unintelligible if you don't understand French because the **(@#(*$ white subtitles get lost in the white tablecloth, in the white dresses, etc. But this is just another reason to not bother with this one.

It was interesting to see this film directed by the woman who made the fascinating 'Mina Tannenbaum', which succeeded better than this one, possibly because it involved fewer characters. This is an ensemble piece on the 'group of friends' theme. These are not as easy to direct as they seem, as there are too many balls in the air at one time. The main problem with this attempt is that we don't really care about these people very much, because they are silly and spoilt and self-indulgent. Apparently, this film is meant to deal with this issue satirically, but this dimension was lost on me, as I am not French and clearly 'don't get that'. The only character with whom I had the slightest sympathy was the one played by Romane Bohringer, who always seems to make her characters of compelling concern, even when they should be repellent. Here again, as in 'L'Appartement', made earlier the same year, Romane plays a girl in the compulsive grip of obsessive love. She is eerily convincing at this, and she must be dangerous to meet, in case she becomes fixated. She gets 'that manic look in her eye' and you have to run! Strangely, Romane seems much slimmer in this film than in the one made earlier in that year. Her performance is certainly the best, but not far behind are Helena Bonham Carter and Elsa Zylberstein, who are also extremely powerful in their performances. Helena B.C. (there is no A.D. version) seems more at ease and casual in this film than in her English films, and as a foreigner her French sounds great to me, though doubtless the Academie Francaise would accuse her of something, and so would those shoulder shruggers to be found all over Omnia Gallia which as we all know divisa est, as no one there ever stops quarreling or quibbling. This film gets better as it goes along, starting rather slowly, with us not knowing who everybody is for some time. Eventually it all pulls together and we think 'how quaint', wistfully thinking: 'Wouldn't it be nice if I cared?' It was disturbing and tragic to see Marie Trintignant in this film, knowing her terrible fate to come, poor girl. She seems shy and occasionally a bit spaced-out, with a hint of decadence, but does well, and one cannot help but sense, 'bravely', as she seems by nature an introvert who was forcing herself to perform in public against her nature.