Chic!

Helene (Marina Hands – 'Tell No-one') works for a Fashion House that of the capricious Alicia Ricosi (Fanny Ardant). Ms Ricosi is putting together her new collection when her lover deserts her – she needs inspiration to work and so has an artistic hissy fit and gives up. Helene is a fixer and so has to find a new muse. Her boss is a quintessential coward and bully and swerves all blame in a master class of deflection leaving Helene to take the rap – hence she is a complete cow to nigh on everyone else.

She also has a nice house that she is getting landscaped but decides to fire the gardener just because she feels like being a biatch. Well fate has a way of bringing the most unlikely of souls together and as the sands of time run out for the new collection so does Alicia meet the recently fired gardener and voilà a muse is born. What follows is a story of ups and downs, lies, cover ups and a pretension smörgåsbord – that is actually very funny in places.

Director Jérôme Cornuau has made a film that is both original and charming. His main man is not classically good looking either and I very much appreciated that an ordinary man could stir emotions like he does here. The laughs are worth waiting for but there are also other issues examined here, that of career progression over integrity, idol worship, the fickleness of fashion and the complete duplicity that is concomitant with those that move in high places. This is a good ride though and has Gallic warmth underneath the well observed pretension. A bit of a love story, a bit of a fashionista expose and a bit of drama; not a bad effort at all and one I can wholeheartedly recommend.

The main problems of this comedy are the two male characters and total predictability. Hélène is a stereotypical career woman, uptight and harsh, a fixer working for the abominable Alain. They both work for designer Alicia (Ardant) yet another stereotypical female, as the passionate woman in need of a male "muse" to finish her collection.

The plot twist should be Julien, the unlikely male muse, actually, Hélène's gardener, a rough Norman guy, whom Hélène just fired and Alice met by chance. As you can guess, opposites attraction is at work and the most unlikely couple of sloppy gardener and uptight fixer is on the way to lovers' paradise, bar a few obstacles.

The actress playing Hélène is actually quite good and Ardant is suave and graceful enough to make amends for her selfish and manipulative character. Unfortunately, the guy playing Julien is very unappealing with a thin face and fragile frame and his character is badly dressed, unshaved, inarticulate, charmless, and disdainful, hardly "muse" material. It's impossible to believe that not one but two sophisticated women would fall for him.

In fact, unattractive actors make suspended disbelief impossible. Much worse is the short, plumpish, blondish guy playing Alain. His character is supposed to be obnoxious but he overdoes wildly in a role that would have been better played straight and cool.

Some of the dialogues are really funny, but the plot deteriorated towards the end, when - for instance - Alice's workers invade Hélène impossible luxurious villa calling it "ugly" and Hélène is ready in a moment to drop a job she fought hard to get. Weird.

Cute little French comedy but done with a lot of flaws. Cliche story with characters that aren't likeable and had zero characterisation. This movie is for pure relaxation and I didn't even mean to watch it but it was on TV and it is contagious.