Bésame por favor

If you like quiet walks in the park,---------------------------------- If you like to rowboat on a lake, ------------------------------------ If you like flying a kite, ------------------------------------------- If you like warmth of the sun on your face, -------------------------- If you like to stump your shoes in a puddle, ------------------------- If you like clicking of shoes on cobblestones, ----------------------- If you like feel of a kiss on your lips ------------------------------ -----------------------------------You will like this movie.

This movie, pardon me; film, is about; relationship, love, desire, and infidelity. Ordinary emotions filmed in the most romantic way only the French could do.

Just saw this movie this afternoon and loved it. A light fare, excellent music, wonderful plot with a twist in the tail at the end. You certainly leave the theater on a high. My favorable impression might be clouded by the fact that I am a admirer and lover of French cinema. Do not expect high drama, superb acting but some wonderful moments that will entertain and amuse every aficionado of modern cinema. Loved the use of color to highlight moods an emotions, with the clothes of the actors and the background of the sets complementing each other wonderfully. The acting as said is not spectacular, however all characters are brought to life and made very personable and likable.

We deserve to know more about Emmanuel Mouret, whose films Variety critic Derek Elley has with good reason called a combination of Woody Allen and Eric Rohmer. Like Woody, Mouret not only writes and directs but is his own delicately droll romantic comedy lead--who combines suggestions of Mr. Allen with M. Jean-Pierre Léaud and Mr. Petter Sellers. How come this is his sixth film and Americans haven't seen any of them? Perhaps because Mouret is a modest filmmaker, who works his way up gradually, adding a few more minutes each time: from 50, he went up to 76, then 85, and this time he's been bold enough to go to 100 minutes. This time, besides himself, following his well-received 2006 Change of Address/Changement d'adresse, which was part of the Diorector's Fortnight at Cannes, he's engaged Julie Gayet, Vieginie Ledoyen, and Stefano Accorsi as co-stars.

Shall We Kiss/Un baiser s'il vous plait is an ingeniously (at one or two moments almost too ingeniously) constructed story-within-a-story. The beauty of it is that the frame-tale is so well-written and acted that we care about visiting textile designer Emilie (Julie Gayet) and Gabriel (Michael Cohen), who gives her a ride on a visit to Nantes, parlays that into a dinner date, then asks her for a goodnight kiss--though the body of the film is the story Emilie tells Gabriel to explain why she thinks even that one kiss would be a dangerous thing. Emilie and Gabriel are a sexy couple, and the suspension of that kiss really keeps viewers holding their breath even as they enjoy the surprises and machinations that now unfold. Mouret's humane and entertaining film is full of a sense of how delicate romantic feelings are and how seamlessly in a courtship the clumsy and the comic and the beautiful can blend into one another. Perhaps best of all, the writer-director envisions a contemporary world in which such a thing as courtship, with its presumption of mutual respect and good manners among all concerned, can still exist.

Emilie's narrative brings in lab researcher Judith (Ledoyen), best friend of math teacher Nicolas (Mouret), who explains to her in one of their weekly tete-a-tetes that he's become so starved for "closeness" (complicité) that to be in the mood to initiate a new relationship he needs a little physical affection--and a kiss--to open him up. He's tried prostitutes, but like the young hustler protagonist of Techine's movie, they "don't kiss"--so that essential "complicité" is lacking. Shyly he asks Judith to help out. Their first attempts at intimacy are ludicrously tentative--with very French discussion back and forth about what to do next before each move forward. They wind up having sex, and though Judith lives with pharmacist Claudio (Accorsi) and (because the renewal of "closeness" apparently "worked") Nicolas soon meets and starts cohabiting with Caline ("Cuddles," Frederique Bel), the two "best friends" eventually have to admit that they can't forget the electricity of their physical encounter. Judith has to grant she isn't so crazy about Claudio any more, and Nicolas hasn't really fallen for Caline and is just hoping he might, later.

Mouret's art is in the way he plays with the old idea of people who have trouble recognizing their own feelings, and the cliché, existing only to be smashed, that best friends can't become lovers. Eventually the inevitable must be recognized. It isn't hard for Nicolas to sit down at a bar and tell Caline he's found someone else he cares about more, and she takes it with aplomb. But Emilie cares too much about Claudio to dump him, and she knows he has never looked at anyone else and has fragile feelings. An elaborate ruse is devised based on Claudio's passion for Schubert, and enlisting help from the cooperative Caline.

All this reminds Gabriel of something that happened to him....which is where the storytelling becomes rather intricate.

The ending is ingenious, but the fun is getting there, and the way Mouret's straightforward direction, simple camera-work, and above all his witty, well-paced dialogue keep the audience consistently engaged and delighted. The music always keeps it light--and smart, with Tchaikovsky ballet music leading off many of the early scenes, and Schubert chamber and solo piano music warmly fleshing out the emotional tone as the romance becomes more intense and more complicated. If you can watch this without having fun maybe you just don't like romantic comedy--at least not the French kind.

Shown as part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center, February 29-March 9, 2008; this opened in France December 12, 2007, receiving high marks from the critics (AlloCiné press rating 3.9).

This movie is like half-popped corn. Remember that gooey feeling? The only reason to see it at all is a silent, dimly lit, near-still three-second shot of Virginie Ledoyen smoking a cigarette by the open window. Like her or not, you have to admit she looks great in half profile. A long-time advertising model (and bona-fide beach babe ever since she played eye candy to Danny Boyle's adaptation of Alex Garland's "The Beach"), she has become a very classy lady indeed. A little too classy for her own good perhaps. Which is true for the movie as a whole. The script lays claim to emotional upheaval and tragic turmoil, but the movie is all surface. If that's a dramatic strategy, it doesn't work for me. With outfits to match the set design, the characters are almost invisible against the backdrop of their tastefully decorated apartments. Think "Closer" meets "Match Point", minus any wit of note. There was only a single line I really liked. Judith (Ledoyen) is trying to convince Nicolas (writer-director-actor Emmanuel Mouret) that they must exorcise their obsession with one another by making its consummation as unpleasant as possible: "Let's do it on the floor. It'll be less comfortable that way." I'll try to remember that, and use it when the time is right.

The 2007 French movie (Un baiser s'il vous plaît)is light summer fare, more rom than com, more sweet amusement that LOL, "more quirky than wacky," as reviewer Roger Moore said in the Orlando Sentinel. A Parisienne (the delectable Julie Gayet) stranded on the empty streets of Nantes with no taxis in sight accepts a ride to her hotel from a stranger (Michaël Cohen), the ride leads to dinner together and obvious attraction, and that leads to his request for a goodnight kiss, "a kiss without consequences," as they are both involved with other people. She says no and is persuaded (in fact this entire movie is filled with effectively clever persuasion) to tell him the story that she says would explain her refusal. That story becomes the majority of the movie, which Stephen Rea in the Philadelphia Inquirer, calls "impossibly French." Kisses can be very powerful, at least they are to the couple she describes, played charmingly by Virginie Ledoyen and Emmanuel Mouret, who also wrote and directed the film. They have been best friends for years and he, in a funk over his lack of physical connection with anyone, persuades her—a married woman—to kiss him. And, while the premise may be a little unrealistic, it's lighthearted fun, delivered smoothly.