Blanche

Avoid this one, unless you want to watch an expensive but badly made movie. Example? The sound is good but the dialogue is not clear - a cardinal sin in a French film.

This film attempts to combine western, drug intrigue and ancien regime costume epic. What? Well, consider this. The cowboy music is hilarious during sword fights. Or how about the woman in her underwear, holding a knife and jumping up and down on the bed?

Someone should do a 'What's Up Tiger Lily' on this bomb. Rewrite the script and then either dub or subtitle it. Heck, it's almost that now. (BTW, Gerard Depardieu and Carole Bouquet, both known to American audiences, have roles.)

After watching the first 20mn of Blanche(sorry I couldn't take more of it), I have now confirmed she does not.

Basically, this "movie" is an insult to the real french actors participating in this farcical piece of junk. It starts from a concept successfully used in French comedies ("Deux heures moins le quart avant Jesus Christ", "La Folie des Grandeurs",...): a historical movie with anachronic tone / dialogues. This can give brilliant results if supported by brilliant actors and a "finesse" of direction avoiding the dreaded "heavy comedy" stigma.

Unfortunately, the horsey-faced Lou Doillon ruins everything and Blanche, instead of a comedy, just turns into an horror movie. Horror to cinephiles who want to be puzzled and shocked watching fine actors such as Decaune, Zem or Rochefort struggling in the middle of this gaudy burlesque kitchy-prissy farce.

I went to see this a few days ago, and it's hard to forget that film...for the wrong reasons. This film is supposed to be funny, it's not, not a single laugh in the theatre( perhaps for josé garcia and gérard Depardieu ), and it's boring, boring, boring. It was even hard sometimes to understand what they were saying. They just talk to fast and don't open their enough for us to understand. I was with a friend and more than 4 or 5 times i caught myself saying after a line that was supposed to be funny " what, what did he say", and i'm french. I hate to say that, given the fact that i think good films are made here, but i apologise in advance for all foreigners who will go see the film ( if ever shown outside of France ).

We're deeply sorry for that cr@p. 2/10

How can such good actors like Jean Rochefort and Carole Bouquet could have been involved in such a... a... well, such a thing ? I can't get it. It was awful, very baldy played (but some of the few leading roles), the jokes are dumb and absolutely not funny... I won't talk more about this movie, except for one little piece of advice : Do not go see it, it will be a waste of time and money.

I got this film knowing very little about it. All I knew was that it was a swashbuckling farce and that it seemed to have split viewers. So, with that in mind I watched it. After an extremely harsh opening, the tale opens out into a fairly lighthearted romp, full of smutty jokes and single entendres. You'll never look at candles the same way again, I can tell you!

The film is in no ways perfect, but as a piece of light relief it doesn't overstay it's welcome and cheered me up when I had a heavy dose of Flu. The relationship between the characters is a little blurred to start with, but if you have a brain and can concentrate you'll not have much problem with the movie. The fight scenes are also quite interesting. Rather than follow the modern convention of tightly edited shots and HK influenced camerawork you get a fairly documentary approach. I found this quite refreshing.

Overall, not bad. Not great, but worth a watch.