La fille de Monaco

With a title like "The Girl from Monaco", a picture of a bodacious babe on the cover, and a description about a neurotic lawyer defending a gangster's mother charged with the murder of a gigolo, I figured this would be a crazy comedy... something between "Legally Blonde" and "My Cousin Vinny" but in French. Boy was I wrong.

Certain filmgoers react negatively when they don't get what they expect. Me, I don't care as long as it's good. And this movie is definitely good. It begins with enough light-hearted comedy to draw you in at the opening scene. Other good laughs are peppered throughout the first half. But you soon realize that it's all a clever candy-coating, masking a dark, winding story beneath. In that respect, I'd compare it to "Art School Confidential" (2006) or "Jeux d'enfants" (2003) or even "Good Morning Vietnam" (1987) which begin as comedies but soon trick us down a different path.

If you go into this film with zero expectations, or better yet, expecting to be led to an unknown destination, I can't imagine you not liking this film. The acting is top notch, creating believable characters who are instantly likable despite their personality quirks. Even the Girl, who is basically a slut of the highest magnitude, comes across as cute, charming and breezy. It's hard not to see elements of the legendary Brigitte Bardot in her unapologetic sexuality.

And that's what this movie is really about: expression vs repression, openness vs modesty, freedom vs self-control. And we see the crazy results of people attempting to bridge between the two worlds. This movie is every bit as compelling as the Bardot films that first explored these sexually-charged themes almost 50 years ago. We see that they're still topical today.

A quick note about content... Even though this is a very sexual story, it's not too explicit, and I think there's only 1 brief nude scene (the girl topless in bed). Most of the steamy stuff is implied through dialogue.

Watch this back-to-back with the Bardot classics "And God Created Woman", "Night Heaven Fell", "Love is My Profession", and so on. Maybe you'll agree it's been a while since a director has been able to capture that same spirit. This movie is so much more than a comedy. Soooo much more.

Fontaine's new film seems on the surface simply a brightly colored Riviera toy, a romantic comedy with some Chabrol-eque twists at the end. There's a bit more; the salt-and-pepper casting of Fabrice Lucchini and Roschdy Zem is at least meant to be sly, the use of newcomer Louise Bourgoin an amusing experiment. Since this is Anne Fontaine, the comedy-drama is also a study of unexpected sexual attractions. It's a somewhat bizarre threesome: a famous lawyer, Bertrand (the soft, mercurial, witty Lucchini); his assigned and initially unwanted security guard, Christophe (the chiseled, tight-lipped Zim); and an air-headed but voluptuous TV weather bunny, Audrey (Bourgoin, a méteo presenter and TV personality in real life). But if the approach and the thinking are individual, the result is still pretty bland and generic.

Bertrand is a crack trial lawyer--and that's an excellent role for the ultra-articulate Lucchini. He's engaged in a high-profile trial in Monaco in which he is defending a posh lady, Édith Lassalle (a rather wasted Stephane Audran) who murdered, by stabbing, her younger Russian boyfriend, a gigolo characterized in court as having been spectacularly well hung. The family's rich, the case is high profile, and the boyfriend was a a sleazy, possibly mafioso Russian, so Édith's son Louis (Gilles Cohen) has engaged a full-time bodyguard for Bertrand.

He, Christophe, maintains his distance, but the cliché happens: Bertrand notices him and, not to be bothered by his hovering, invites him to dinner. There not being any real physical danger anyway, Chirstophe soon becomes simply Bertrand's girl wrangler, disposing of an annoying ex-girlfriend of the lawyer (Jeanne Balibar) by bedding her, then keeping Audrey at bay when she begins seducing the lawyer in the middle of the trial. The surprise (but isn't it another comedy cliché?) is, Christophe and Audrey have a history. Why not? She's screwed everyone on 'The Rock.' He pretends to be the strong silent type, but the new Bertrand-Audrey story complicates the buddy-picture aspect of things by making Christophe both more personally protective of Bertrand and dangerously jealous of him, when this strong silent type turns out not to have gotten that girl out of his system. Christophe reacts with repressed rage toward Audrey, and the film turns strangely serious. But not serious enough to make an impression. And the comedy wasn't funny enough to be memorable either. The screenplay might have worked better if Fontaine had chosen one direction or the other and flown with it.

Sure, this is a good cast and the colorful, free Monagasque atmosphere is made integral to the action. But truth to tell Bourgoin is just a tasty bauble who's not drop-dead gorgeous or soulful enough to have a great future ahead of her. Whatever they may have thought, Bardot she's not. Fontaine's strict directing of Lucchini (who is far wittier and funnier on TV and probably in his stage performances) and Zem (whose role remains relatively servile here), holding both back from "doing" much, or being fully themselves, fails to make the most of either. Lucchini is always fun to watch (and to hear talk) but he's more fun to watch when he's just being himself. It's obvious that a Chabrol treatment of this theme would be better and his recent 'Girl Cut in Two' has more depth--without having much depth.

Ultimately, and, alas, well before the last scene, this is a movie that disappoints. Will Sloan wasn't far from the mark when he commented that this illustrates Matt Groening's notion of "cinema's greatest paradox," that "the French are funny, sex is funny, and comedies are funny, yet no French sex comedies are funny." It's true of this one at least. A perusal of 'How I Killed My Father' and the less often mentioned but intriguing 'Dry Cleaning' will show how far this piece of frippery is from Anne Fontaine's best work.

'La fille de Monaco' debuted in Paris August 20, 2008, to satisfactory reviews. Shown as part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema at Lincoln Center, March 2009. It has been bought for distribution by Magnolia Pictures for an early July US release. with US release planned for early July. 2009

Bertrand (Fabrice Luchini) is a lawyer on a high-profile case in Monaco, and then he meets Audrey - "The Girl from Monaco". It could be interesting except there is nothing in these characters to connect us to them.

The three main characters, Audrey, Bertrand and his bodyguard had really strange relationships with each other. Way too intimate of conversations for virtual strangers. So I felt further away from them and never could care for them.

I also never could figure out what genre this film is supposed to be. The plot outline reads like a thriller, but it says its supposed to be a comedy and it plays out more like a romantic drama. I can see the comedy elements, and it is light in its nature, but it's not laugh-out-loud funny. It's too strange to be romantic, and nothing interesting develops to make this a thriller. Perhaps it really is a comedy as it claims, just a not very funny one.

It has high production value, it's shot well, and "The Girl from Monaco" is definitely beautiful, but there's nothing in the story to recommend it.

This film screened at the 2009 Palm Springs Film Fest to a large, mostly receptive audience. The plot involves a Parisian attorney who travels to Monaco to defend a woman accused of murder. On arriving he finds that he's been assigned a bodyguard who becomes a major part of the story. He also rather quickly finds himself becoming involved with locals, among them an aggressive young female who does the weather on a local TV channel but has much higher aspirations. Without giving away too much of the story, this film seems to go deeper than it appears on the surface. It seemed to me to be an allegory to the state of affairs in France and many other places in the world. The loss of common decency and higher standards is a threat to our existence. The lawyer is a straight arrow old school fellow, with high ethics, who becomes seduced by a woman with all the trappings of modern society. She and her friends have little regard for what's right or wrong and just live for the moment, with little thought about the consequences. The movie is enjoyable to watch, even if you're not interested in subplots or extra meaning, but this one is full of room for discussion after you leave the theater.

French film "The Girl from Monaco" begins on a promising note with renowned actor Fabrice Luchini flirting with an older woman. He is unaware of the fact that this innocuous action is being watched in detail by a bodyguard whose services have been provided to him without his knowledge. This is just the commencement of a series of zany adventures involving unusual people namely a fun loving lawyer, a dedicated bodyguard and a promiscuous yet charmingly nubile weather woman. Although the title mentions the word 'Monaco' there is not much description of Monaco and its casinos. The film runs at a normal pace but gains momentum within second half when innocence is replaced by cunning. It is at that point some surprising elements are introduced to make the film appear interesting. Director Anne Fontaine has made quirky films in the past but 'The Girl From Monaco' is completely different from all her films. It tries hard to be a serious film but remains a comedy in essence. It is a film which one can watch with friends in order to have some good moments of entertainment.