Der Vater meiner besten Freundin

French movies are either so boring and dull or totally opposite: really awesome. This one is really great and kinda feel good movie ( at least for me).

What I liked about the movie... I liked the landscapes and whole background. Really nice nature of the Corsica ( though I believe it was filmed somewhere in the south of France) and colors of the summer. The soundtrack to the movie was surprisingly new - Lean On, Diamonds by Rihanna and many recent hits. The girls are really believable ( well, I guess all they had to do is to be themselves) and Vincent. The other dad was over dramatic and I had a feeling he was trying too hard to act those angry and awkward situations that he becomes cartoonishly silly.

I did not know that the movie is a remake of the 70's movie... I might look for it. The whole summertime feel and carelessness feel remind me of another French movie: The Pool.

All in all, the movie is really watchable and enjoyable. It ends with a girl smiling...and I couldn't help but smile too.

Seven + from me.

There is a reason that some of the other reviewers have noted that the plot of this movie is very similar to the 1984 American film "Blame It on Rio". BOTH movies are remakes of a now largely forgotten 1977 French film with the same title as this one, "Un Moment d'engarement" ("One Wild Moment"). It is interesting though that the French are STILL making films like this, while the Americans wouldn't touch this subject today with a ten-foot pole. It's very doubtful older teenage girls have become more virginal since the 1970's and 1980's, and the idea that a sexual relationship between a younger person and an older person is ALWAYS "predatory" (provided the younger person is old enough to be sexually active in the first place)is a lot more debatable than it is often made out to be. Are sexually active teenage girls really a lot better off with an inexperienced guy "their own age" who doesn't even know how to successfully use a condom?

For me though it is pretty simple. There are A LOT of things that seem exciting and enticing in movies, but would be extremely foolish and probably disastrous to do in real life. I definitely wouldn't lie down on the train tracks and let a train pass over me, even though it seems exciting when they do it in movies, and by the same token, while I enjoy the fantasy of movies like this (or the two earlier versions), I certainly wouldn't do it in real life. I doubt even in real-life France that middle-age men routinely sleep with their friends' teenage daughters, but the French also just don't have the ridiculous puritanical hang-ups of Americans when it comes to anything having to do with S-E-X, and thank god for that.

For what it's worth, this version does make one concession to our more cautionary times. While the young actresses in the original "Un Moment d'engarement" and "Blame It On Rio" were both slightly underage themselves at the time like their characters, the actress here, Lola Le Lann, was actually about twenty, and ANY male of ANY age will find her VERY attractive as she frolics around completely naked in the surf. Ooh-la-la! I do think they should have switched the male roles and had the more mature and repressed Francois Cluzet get involved with his friend's daughter as opposed to the more youthful and "dangerous" Vincent Cassell. (That dynamic worked better in "Blame It On Rio" where the hapless Michael Caine had to deal with the volatile Joseph Bologna, who was trying to find the older man who slept with his daughter). Still this is a pretty entertaining and sexy movie, but definitely don't expect another American remake in this day and age.

I can't believe how bad this movie is and how bad François Cluzet, George Bush look alike in it. A very annoying, phony, stupidly written and directed movie. I didn't even make it half way through before it almost put me to sleep. No character depth, I didn't connect or relate to the characters at all. Empty dialogs that lack true emotion. All actors were really bad, but François Cluzet was the worst. Unbelievable for a famous actor like him. I though he was not bad in The Untouchables. I generally enjoy French cinema, but they were following Hollywood steps lately producing junk after junk like this one or "Tu veux... ou tu veux pas?" for example.

If you read a couple of things about this, then you know what direction this is going to. And the whole setup might annoy some people, because it does take its time to introduce the characters, make us aware of who is who and their general relationship with each other. I think it's important to know those things, others may disagree, just know where you are standing with this.

Of course not all decisions by the characters are really good and appropriate. Otherwise we wouldn't have a movie and an issue in itself. The female in question has Lolita qualities and you can see where one would at least have thoughts that might not be in ones own best interest. Things are not always black and white, and people do certain things out of the spark of the moment (or because they were drunk). The ending ... well I'll let you decide what to make of it ...

I loved it! You need to know Corse and its habitants to understand some of the great moments of this movie, it may also lose part of its great dialogues in translation. Vincent Cassel is at its best.