Poupoupidou

I found this movie on Netflix browsing the French foreign section. It is really mostly a dry comedy I suppose but is much more. It is also an extremely creative gay friendly detective story about a modern parallel life to Marilyn Monroe's in the form of Candice Le Coeur from the coldest part of France.

It is funny foremost with characters like the Hotel clerk who has the hots for the Rousseau (the main character). The lesbian psychiatrist taking close up pictures of tree moss...on and on. Rousseau is a novel writer who stumbles on Candice's murder and follows up and solves it for inspiration for a book.

It is just so non formula so unique so humorous. Just watch it. Not sure what the number 5 means?? showing fate is at work anyway.

This is the only movie on Netflix streaming I have watched twice.

RECOMMEND HIGHLY

Often a film critic references another film/actor/director in a review to give the reader some sense of the style of film one might expect. (ie: "Hitchcock-ian," "Spielberg-ian," "Uwe Boll-of-Crap," etc.) I'm guilty of this myself. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it hurts. The comparison often leads an audience to go into a film with certain expectations that are often unfulfilled.

Such is how it has been with "Nobody Else but You," a French film now in general release. The material I received when previewing this film compares it to a couple of films/TV shows and I think that, in this case, it does a disservice to the film. I found "Nobody Else but You" to be a winningly original, highly entertaining film and an absolute rarity – a mystery that doesn't telegraph its ending and manages to keep its reveal to the very (satisfying) end.

Set in small town France in the dead of winter - isn't winter the best season for mysteries? - Jean-Paul Rouve plays a mystery writer (with writer's block, of course) who arrives in town for the reading of a will. After disposing of his inheritance, he hits the road and comes upon a very unusual scene – a crime scene - the apparent suicide of the celebrity "spokesmodel" for the local dairy (Sophie Quinton.) What's a mystery writer to do? Investigate!

And so it begins. Yes, I know what you're thinking. None of this seems very original, but it's not the stock components (suicide/murder/writer's block/narration from beyond the grave, etc.) that make this film. It's what director Gerald Hustache-Mathieu does with them. He takes these hackneyed elements and constructs something new and refreshing around them – and he does it by taking all these mystery fundamentals and inserting them (in a very original way) into what we know about some very famous people.

I mean, when's the last time you saw a really good film that combined all those elements with the world's endearing obsession with Marilyn Monroe, her gay iconic status, her relationship with the Kennedys, the mystery surrounding her death and modern French politics - all set to the beat of a kick-ass soundtrack?

You haven't. Till now.

www.worstshowontheweb.com

Well made film wacky funny somewhat surreal mystery of the death of a Marilyn Monroe reincarnation doomed to suffer a similar fate.

I love these crazy kind of movies this one was a pleasant surprise from Netflix streaming.

It is basically a comedy and had to be written by an American or an americanphile Frenchman. All the little details like Jiminey Cricket.

You just have to watch this thing.

You will enjoy this I think.

RECOMMEND

This crime writer arrives in winter and the first thing he sees is a dead woman being taken care of. That interests him and he starts to explore her life. It has voluntarily and involuntarily been a copy of the Marilyn Monroe story. Complete with "DiMaggio", "Arthur Miller" and so on.

It all turns into a crime story of the type he writes himself. But is it interesting? Absolutely too much of the traditional American thrillers here, but with people who don't belong there.

You can't even feel enough sympathy for the dead tragic woman to keep your interest up. It would have been better with more talk and less action.

David Rousseau is a crime mystery writer driving through a small town in France when he happens upon an ambulance loading a body into the back. Candice Lecoeur, a semi famous model has been found dead in the snow of an apparent suicide. Rousseau becomes obsessed with the death which closely parallels the life of Marilyn Monroe. With the premise of writing a new novel, he investigates the circumstances and final days of Lecoeur's life. He befriends a local detective and they team up to solve the possibility of a crime.

Through a series of flashbacks, Lecoeur's life is examined using diaries she had written from her teens to present day. This is a top notch mystery thriller with excellent performances by the two leads, Jean-Paul Rouve as Rosseau and Sophie Quinton as Lecoeur. It is heart breaking at times but well worth your time, an 8/10.