Baciate chi vi pare

Let's face it: the people in this film of vacationing Frenchmen are often unpleasant, sometimes downright loathsome. And yet, I had a good time watching, owing to Michel Blanc's skill at keeping all the balls in the air. I don't know how many speaking parts there are, maybe 20, but the energy never flags because of the marvelous actors. Karin Viard is my favorite actress for comedy; here she is wonderful as the frustrated wife of Podalydès trying to scrimp through a holiday that their finances really don't allow. The scene of Podalydès standing on the cliff, with Rampling quietly trying to buck him up, Ulliel crouched below, his tryst with Mélanie Laurent interrupted, and Viard gabbing away unwittingly with her friends until her husband jumps is a comic masterpiece.

Carole Bouquet is another favorite of mine, since she stole Bunuel's last picture Cet obscur objet du désir over 30 years ago. She too is great in comedy--here she is saddled with the most jealous husband in recent film memory (go back to François Cluzet's harassing of Emmanuelle Béart in L'enfer). Blanc keeps yelling at her, accusing her of infidelities, and she grimly makes the best of it, helped by her new-found friends Rampling and Viard. As I said at the outset, sometimes the characters do unpleasant things, but you don't get the feeling that the deck is stacked against them.

This is a pretty typical French farce. As is in seemingly all French movies, most of the characters are on vacation at a beach resort (although one actually stays back at home working!). There are three middle age couples and their assorted children/step-children. Two of the women (Charlotte Rampling and Karen Viard) are long-time friends and they meet a third woman (carole Bouquet) with a VERY jealous husband at the resort. Viard and her husband have a new baby and financial troubles. There's a young woman (Clotilde Coreau) and a teenage boy, who are somebody's children (this movie has no English subs and my French leaves a lot to be desired). Another daughter (Lou Doillon) has gone on a separate vacation to Chicago with her father's hapless employee and she proves to be WAY more than he can handle. One of the married couples each have casual, breezy affairs. There's also the usual French May-December sexual encounter, but with gender roles reversed (older woman-younger man) and a transsexual.

I didn't really recognize most of the male cast, but the female cast here is quite impressive. Charlotte Rampling is a Brit actress, but since collaborating with Francois Ozon on a couple films, she has worked mostly in France the past decade or so. Carole Bouquet is a former Bond girl ("For Your Eyes Only") and ex-wife of Gerard Depardieu. She's had a long career in French film going all the way back to Luis Bunuel's last film, "That Obscure Object of Desire". Lou Doillon is the French daughter of another transplanted Brit actress, minor 60's sex symbol Jane Birkin, which would also make her the half-sister of Charlotte Gainsbourg. She is not as talented as her sibling, but she might be even more sexy, and she has pretty much all the erotic scenes here (of which there are surprisingly few for a French movie). Clotilde Coreau, on the other hand, might be most famous (well, with me anyway)for her hot and gratuitous lesbian scene in the bizarre French slasher film "Deep in the Woods", but most of her other French roles have been much more sedate and mainstream like the one here.

Of course, I would need to see this with English subs to fully appreciate it, but even in French it is pretty energetic and fun. If you generally like these French/continental bedroom farces, I'm sure you'll enjoy this one.

Zillionth French "tranches de vie" comedy gets a bit upgraded through actresses Carole Bouquet and Charlotte Rampling, the only 2 likable characters in the whole flick. The rest of the cast is so obnoxious, self-centered and arrogant you dislike 'em the second they appear on the screen. Especially the oversexed 17-year old daughter, although very pretty, is as they say in French "une emmerdeuse de prémière classe" ( a first-rate pain in......).

It may fast-paced and funny in an art-house kindaway but it remains supremely annoying.

For some good recent French comedies opt instead of course for 'Amélie', or something with actor Benoit Poelvoorde (Le vélo, Dead weight,Podium)or 'Mission Cleopatre' based on the highly popular french comic books "Asterix".

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this is not typically french as i've read in some other comments. the film is based on a british book ....

it's a very acid and cynic satire of how some people's lives are laced with lies ...

it has this kind of witty bitter humour that will make it a very enjoyable movie, and i'm going to buy the book to see if there are any notable differences..

thank you for your attention !

This is one of those superficial little French comedies that finesses its way through numerous sexual liaisons and adulteries with the tolerance only the French seem to have for such things. It's actually quite amusing in an if-I-didn't-have-to-break-a-leg-to-see-it kind of way and going to see an inoffensive film with subtitles makes you look sophisticated (though this may be reduced if you see it in a popcorn munching multiplex).