Embrassez qui vous voudrez

This is one of those superficial little French comedies that finesses its way through numerous sexual liaisons and adulteries with the tolerance only the French seem to have for such things. It's actually quite amusing in an if-I-didn't-have-to-break-a-leg-to-see-it kind of way and going to see an inoffensive film with subtitles makes you look sophisticated (though this may be reduced if you see it in a popcorn munching multiplex).

subtle, refined, typically french, investigating human relations in a more complex manner, but all with a smile on your face (a smile ?, no, sorry, A BIG LAUGH !).

LAUGHING and LAUGHING and LAUGHING !!!

VERY ORIGINAL (again - typically french)

If you like french movies you MUST see it. If not ... run away.

It was Francois Ozon's 'Swimming Pool' that really made me sit up and take note of Charlotte Rampling's suitability to french cinema. Her stern facade yet the notion she is longing for sexual freedom suits it to a 't'.

After 'Swimming Pool' I made a conscious search for Rampling's other forays into french cinema, and this is one of the surprisingly many i came up with.

'Summer Things' seemed to me a bit like a multiple brief encounter. It follows a family riddled with dissatisfaction and their friends over the course of a summer. The daughter off for a 'naughty summer'in Chicago with the boyfriend her parents don't know about, the mother off with her friends all of whom have terrible family problems themselves, and the father who spends the summer liberated from the wife he is confused by, in the arms of his transsexual lover.

The characters are all linked in such deliciously complex ways - one of the biggest links being how much they need this change, this summer to not make them change their lives as what is expected of films of this nature, but in fact to learn how to enjoy the lives they already have - this idea was so refreshing, and like 'brief encounter' what made it so real. there weren't any epiphanies, just character developments, life lessons and realisations of the fact that the grass is never as green as we hope it might be.

Watch it! :)

Zillionth French "tranches de vie" comedy gets a bit upgraded through actresses Carole Bouquet and Charlotte Rampling, the only 2 likable characters in the whole flick. The rest of the cast is so obnoxious, self-centered and arrogant you dislike 'em the second they appear on the screen. Especially the oversexed 17-year old daughter, although very pretty, is as they say in French "une emmerdeuse de prémière classe" ( a first-rate pain in......).

It may fast-paced and funny in an art-house kindaway but it remains supremely annoying.

For some good recent French comedies opt instead of course for 'Amélie', or something with actor Benoit Poelvoorde (Le vélo, Dead weight,Podium)or 'Mission Cleopatre' based on the highly popular french comic books "Asterix".

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This is a pretty typical French farce. As is in seemingly all French movies, most of the characters are on vacation at a beach resort (although one actually stays back at home working!). There are three middle age couples and their assorted children/step-children. Two of the women (Charlotte Rampling and Karen Viard) are long-time friends and they meet a third woman (carole Bouquet) with a VERY jealous husband at the resort. Viard and her husband have a new baby and financial troubles. There's a young woman (Clotilde Coreau) and a teenage boy, who are somebody's children (this movie has no English subs and my French leaves a lot to be desired). Another daughter (Lou Doillon) has gone on a separate vacation to Chicago with her father's hapless employee and she proves to be WAY more than he can handle. One of the married couples each have casual, breezy affairs. There's also the usual French May-December sexual encounter, but with gender roles reversed (older woman-younger man) and a transsexual.

I didn't really recognize most of the male cast, but the female cast here is quite impressive. Charlotte Rampling is a Brit actress, but since collaborating with Francois Ozon on a couple films, she has worked mostly in France the past decade or so. Carole Bouquet is a former Bond girl ("For Your Eyes Only") and ex-wife of Gerard Depardieu. She's had a long career in French film going all the way back to Luis Bunuel's last film, "That Obscure Object of Desire". Lou Doillon is the French daughter of another transplanted Brit actress, minor 60's sex symbol Jane Birkin, which would also make her the half-sister of Charlotte Gainsbourg. She is not as talented as her sibling, but she might be even more sexy, and she has pretty much all the erotic scenes here (of which there are surprisingly few for a French movie). Clotilde Coreau, on the other hand, might be most famous (well, with me anyway)for her hot and gratuitous lesbian scene in the bizarre French slasher film "Deep in the Woods", but most of her other French roles have been much more sedate and mainstream like the one here.

Of course, I would need to see this with English subs to fully appreciate it, but even in French it is pretty energetic and fun. If you generally like these French/continental bedroom farces, I'm sure you'll enjoy this one.