Les belles Américaines

This tiresome attempt at comedy is remarkable for the career-changing comic performance delivered by the usually dour Joanna Cassidy. It's only a pity that she's playing Kay Kendall stuck in a film directed by Carol Wiseman in the style of a Jerry Lewis programmer. As "ugly Americans" holidaying in Paris, Cassidy and her daughter, Lara Flynn Boyle, both strike up affairs with their doctor, Guy Marchand, which involves lots of unfunny broad comedy with reaction cuts to the hotel doorman and concierge. Marchand rushes around looking foolish, with Wiseman undercutting any charm he presumably has by exposing his hairy back, and reinforcing the stereotype of Frenchmen as womanisers. In neither relationship is there any indication of sensations apart from sex, which may be Wiseman's take on feminism though her continued point scoring off both ladies soon humiliates all three. The film is loaded with a painfully cutesy score by Andre Georget, which practically dates it as Disney circa 1965, and Wiseman only provides one memorable romantic image of Flynn Boyle in a taxi in sepia tones. This role locates Flynn Boyle in her post-Twin Peaks Winona Ryder days and before she became the sleek tigress she thinks she is today. In spite of her brat character, she shows a flair for clever line readings on the few occasions Wiseman allows her. Presenting Flynn Boyle's pre-Paris boyfriend in naked full frontal is a surprise though Wiseman's having Cassidy drop cigarette ash on him, and then later having her shoot the penis off a statue, must be some kind of phallic revenge. As Cassidy's husband who we see in the early scenes and who later visits Paris, whilst having practically nothing to work with, Paul Freeman is likeable.

My review was written in December 1990 after watching the movie on Media Home Entertainment video cassette.

"May Wine" is a mild romantic comedy, like the forthcoming "The Maid" a French-made picture aimed at the American cable and video markets.

"Twin Peaks" co-star Lara Flynn Boyle does a fine job as a California girl on the loose in paris, visiting there with mom Joanna Cassidy in an effort to broaden her horizons.

Both fall for sexy gynecologist Guy Marchand, and pic becomes a rather conventional boulevard comedy, a natural assignment for Marchand (from "Cousin Cousine").

It's a pleasant if uneventful exercise, with an anticlimactic payoff. Peter Lefcourt's script could have beefed up Paul Freeman's role as Cassidy's husband left behind in L. A., and a deeper supporting cast in Paris would have helped.

Cassidy's infectious laugh is used to good effect and the film does fill the vacuum of femme-oriented material. On the basis of this effort Boyle is ready for some challenging widescreen roles.

I just purchased a VHS copy of this movie and I'm a Lara Flynn Boyle fan anyway. I liked the Paris scenery shots and the interior shots of the beautiful hotel where the mother (Joanna Cassidy) and daughter (Lara Flynn Boyle) stayed and the indoor café shots. The plot wasn't that important to me, I mean a middle aged Frenchman/doctor having an affair with both the mother and the daughter seems normal (if you watch enough French movies, which I do) for Parisian theme, but I think the mother was in it for loneliness and the daughter to have a man spend money on her so she could continue her wild ways and if a love fling happened in the meantime, that was fine with the daughter. When you think of Paris, the last thing that comes to your mind is behaving and keeping your morals. These two women were out to have fun and any Frenchman loves women who love to have fun. Between the sights of the city, cafés, attractive Parisians and cast members, I think this movie was quite enjoyable and not meant to be taken seriously. There is non of the usual little "lets make fun of them" jabs between the French and the Americans which happens in many other movies of this type. Everyone gets along and this compliments the atmosphere of this movie. I liked it.

I completely agree with the Australian's take on this movie. It is just awful. For me, perhaps the most painful thing is watching the two principal female characters be, well, so AWFUL in a light comedy. The mother has a husband and we are given nothing to indicate any problem with their marriage. The daughter has a boyfriend, to whom she is so devoted that she brings his framed photograph to place beside her bed in the Paris hotel in which mother and daughter stay.

Yet what causes them both immediately to have a fit when their bags are lost on the plane? (Ttuly within 30 seconds)? The fact that their birth control pills were in their bags. Both fully intend to have affairs immediately and to lie to their husband and boyfriend in so doing.

Why? We aren't told.

Anything charming about this? Absolutely not.

As the 50 something year old doctor who has an affair with the 17 year old daughter (the age of consent to avoid statutory rape charges in my state), the Frenchman is decidedly creepy - particularly since his fornication occurs while doing a medical exam upon her.

Yes, the girl and her mother have thrown themselves at him - but the doctor knows one is married and the other is 17 -- and has suspicions that she is the daughter of the sluttish Joanna Cassidy - who cares far more about getting to the gym than her fidelity.

This is truly a smarmy, creepy movie - mirthless, soaked in a sort of debauchery of materialistic and sexual pleasure. Yet somehow we are expected to identify with these loathsome females.

I don't know what they were thinking when they made this movie - I don't know whether it is American (some lines are foreign, e.g., the girl saying that she coudn't get down to the doctor's "surgery", an English, not an American word in this context).

Many of the lines and scenes are unlike any I've ever heard or seen.

A) The mother (now 40, who had her only child at the age of 21) is delighted to see her daughter's boyfriend stand stand before her fully nude at her home (and why does he walk about nude in front of his girlfriend's mother?).

B) The high school age daughter somehow embarrasses the mother, rather than the other way around, when she suddenly has hundreds of French francs in her possession - after having borrowed all her mother's clothes and jewelry - and refuses to say where she has been all day in a country in which she doesn't speak the language.

C) The mother's entire purpose in visiting Paris is to order new fashions for her boutique - yet seems to have no guilt in sending away designers without much of a look at their drawings - because she's thinking of the next penetration she may receive from her doctor.

This movie is very grim, very unlikeable. Don't see it.