Monique

After nice French movies like 'Le Fabuleux Destin ...' and 'L'Auberge Espagnole', 'Monique' shows us that France can also make very bad movies. There are some scenes very funny in this movie, but they can't make the people forget the stupid story. The cast are doing their very best, it's a pity. 'Monique' is not a good movie, that's for sure!

The author wrote for TV before but it is her first long-feature movie. Well it has a lot of what first movies have : good ideas, not so well used.

Maybe the writer/director did not "live" enough to have an indeep feeling of those terrible matter, love and sex, male and female, human or puppet.

Some parts are realy funny, some others lacks of something.

Some situations can't work but no fictional gift is made to make us believe to them so... I'd say : watchable, could have been much better (or much worst too). I'd love to see a such subject writen by a 50 old woman for instance. The acting is not bad but the parts are not always well written.

I just saw the movie and I find it fantastic. It's all about having the guts to fulfill your passions, your fantasies, your ideals without paying attention to what others, society have to say about it. It proves that counts in love is not the reality, but ideas, desires and, most of all, faith! I mean, Alex certainly proves some kind of jealousy for Monique, a silicon doll. it also shows how much love is a personal construct and let people express their deep ideals. it's not about the perfect doll-woman; it is about Alex's desired Monique. don't go to see it if you are one of the 80% of American women thinking that their neighbors do nasty things and that only they, they aren't. and hold your moral, duty sense.

Alex (Albert Dupontel) and Claire (Marianne Denicourt) are living a boring and tedious life after years of marriage. They do not communicate to each other anymore, and Alex is almost speechless at home and without motivation and inspiration in his work as a former successful photographer. When Claire decides to leave him to live with her sculptor teacher, and Alex, completely wasted, accidentally orders an expensive and desirable sex molded doll called "Monique", his life changes completely. Alex falls in love with Monique, making all his fantasies come true, while his privacy is respected. His behavior affects the lives of his closest friends and Claire.

This witty and original comedy plays with endured and routine relationships that are completely exhausted, without communication or sex life. Alex represents those men in middle-age crisis that keep their boring and tedious marriage without any further emotions or dialog, actually accommodated to the situation. Claire represents those women afraid to give a step ahead in life, balancing between a stable finished relationship and the fear for new feelings and experiences. Monique represents the new, the refreshment of a wasted life and the dream of most "Alexs". The director Valérie Guignabodet shows a great sensibility, approaching this delicate theme in a funny and neutral way, never being corny or accusing or defending who is right or who is wrong in this battle of sexes. One correction: The Worldcup of 1950 was in Brazil, director Valérie Guignabodet committed a serious research mistake. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Monique – Sempre Feliz" ("Monique – Always Happy")

This first movie of a woman directly come from French television is based on comparatively classic basis. Albert Dupontel plays the role of Max, a man who has everything to be happy: a stable job as a photograph, a ravishing wive (Marianne Denicourt) but little by little, depression overcomes him so much so that nearly nothing interests him. One night, during a night of drinking bout, he orders on Internet a molded doll as tall as him called Monique. It doesn't take him long to fall in love with her and to look after her as good as possible to the surprise of his friends.

By reading this summary of the story, it is evident that Valérie Guignabodet, at least in the first part of her movie was influenced by "Kennedy et moi" (1999), a film made by Sam Karmann starring Jean-Pierre Bacri. The latter and Albert Dupontel act the same type of character and present several similarities. They're both family fathers. They are sick of their respective lives. Their wives deceive them with lovers. But at least they find some comfort with their fathers who live in old people's homes. But especially, they regain strength thanks to silly actions. If Bacri found taste for life again because he could get the watch of his shrink (the one that Kennedy wore on the day he was killed), here Dupontel, his love for a molded doll makes him happy and Monique doesn't leave Dupontel's friends indifferent.

Except for the will to show that her main character treats "Monique" like a real woman, Valérie Guignabodet also directed her movie on the meetings between Max's friends and "Monique" as well as the consequences. Through this method we can formulate that "Monique", for the male characters, is the perfect woman, the one that every man would like to get which cause their wives' frustrations.

Guignabodet's work is a good one and if she doesn't avoid the predictable sudden new developments, if her style contains ponderousness, if the film writing lacks coherence towards the end, her movie reserves good moments and it often borders on the surrealism and the politically incorrect. Moreover, the absurdity of the sequences where we see Max taking care of her lifeless love is enhanced by a photography with very kitsch colors and the chosen songs give to the movie a crazy air.

Valérie Guignabodet's career as a film-maker is in a good way as this globally successfully movie shows.