Je vous trouve très beau

I can't rate this film because I saw only about the first half of it on a flight back from Paris. What I saw I loved.

Comedy doesn't travel well. I'm an American, dyed in the wool, and I normally find French comedy annoying--self-conscious and stilted. This movie, however, is funny, and I give most of the credit to Michel Blanc. He is subtly hilarious as the single-minded rube trying to replace his dead wife-cum-farmhand-cum-cook-cum-housekeeper the way you or I might try to replace a pair of comfortable old shoes with new ones. He just can't make the clerk understand.

I like hard comedy--vicious satire, outrageous parody, clever wordplay--and this movie is none of those. It could hardly be more conventional. The plot is that of a TV sitcom episode, and the script is studied and tame. Still, I laughed out loud every few minutes, and taking into account jet lag and nicotine deprivation, that's saying something.

I hadn't expect to like this movie. It deals with things from my country I desperately wanted to escape from - lack of money, desperation, the small price a woman can ask for herself. And I hadn't really liked a Romanian movie eversince I was a child and I was watching silly communist movies. But this movie had good credentials and people close to me had enjoyed it, so when I had the chance I watched it, first with prejudiced disgust, then with interest and at the end with emotion. It is a lovely movie, about not so lovely people that in the end turn out to be just fabulous. It is the first movie about ugly Romania that I actually enjoyed watching. I am grateful for that.

Loved the movie! I chose to see this French movie, though I knew nothing about it and wished for a light romantic comedy. I received much more. Not a "funny" comedy but a "chamber" movie with two chamber players, gentle, touching and heart-warming. I loved every character's portrayal, including Ciufu the dog. Coming out of the cinema, I saw smiling faces and overheard men commenting, in surprise, that they did enjoy the movie. The matching of an older -not exactly handsome- man with a younger, vivacious woman, reminded me of two other movies (that quite differ):

1. "Alexandre Le bienheureux",1967,(Philippe Noiret v.Marlene Jobert)- (Hilarious!)

2. "As good as it gets" (Jack Nicholson v. Helen Hunt)- (saw it twice and still find the chemistry unconvincing).

I shall definitely add this movie to my DVD collection.

Isabelle Mergault's You Are So Handsome/Je vous trouve très beau is a conventional mainstream French film with a slightly new theme: what happens when an Eastern European mail-order bride is brought in on the QT to help out with chores on a French provincial farm. Shortly after the film begins, French farmer Aymé (super-popular actor Michel Blanc) loses his wife in an off-screen accident. Little love was lost between the gruff pair, and once his wife's gone, Aymé's main concern is who, now, is going to do the laundry, cook, and tend to the chickens and cows on his farm. He can't do all that himself. So he's barely out of his funeral suit when we see him accompanying a professional matchmaking lady on a plane to Bucharest to interview prospective brides. It's obvious there are lots of girls over there desperate to get out, some with the rudiments of French. One of the interviewees, Elena (Medeea Marinescu), has the sense to dress down and say she likes animals. "You Look so handsome" is what they all tell the farm widower – even Elena. When they say it, Michel Blanc's rubber-faced deadpan goes all pouty.

He winds up picking Elena – sort of. He doesn't marry her. He arranges for her to arrive back home after him, pretends she's a distant relative come for an internship on the farm, and doesn't even admit to his family that he's been to Rumania. He produces faked photos and canned sauerkraut to convince them he was in Germany for a farm equipment trade fair. He also forces Elena to pretend to everybody else that she speaks no French.

Nonetheless Elena is soon living with Aymé – though "on approval" – and helping with chores. She wants to be affectionate, but he's as brusque as ever and will have none of it. The pout stays put, despite the charms of Elena, who could pass as a young Meryl Streep and captivates all the local boys at public functions. Aymé is not above getting jealous when that happens. He's possessive, but not giving.

Je vous trouve très beau isn't challenging or subtle, but it does up the rich nation/poor nation dilemma. It's also a change from the general run of French films focused on sophisticated bourgeois Parisians (or their outcast banlieu neighbors). Veteran actress and experienced screenwriter Isabelle Mergault's first directorial effort is an entertainment, not a specific regional portrait or a searching piece of social realism designed to arouse our geopolitical awareness. It's a sentimental tale that milks its laughs and tears in an easy, simplistic way – even if it's also marked by an emotional trajectory that leaves one feeling rather muddled.

The rest of the cast is replete with (generally believable) stereotypes: the noisy relatives (who're quite appealing, but hardly seen in depth); the young country boys who gather around the pert, mini-skirted Elena; a big mute boy, her best friend in the daytime, who moons around her and helps with the chores; an old crone who has one repeated joke refrain, "Who's dead?" The cliché we've got to believe in is that Aymé's gruffness eventually melts – but a little late. By the time he's realized that he cares for Elena as a person and not just a housekeeper, and gives his one big speech about her coming on to him made him feel old and undesirable and turn on the one thing he most wanted, Elena's just about unhappy enough to walk back to Bucharest, and he provides a way.

This is the old story of the hard-hearted loner (Aymé and his dead wife have obviously lived as if they were alone for years) whose façade eventually cracks and lets the human being timidly peek out. But the process is so protracted we don't get a clearcut resolution. Most of the relationship scenes are little images of hurt and apology, reaching out and drawing back. First-timer Mergault hasn't achieved a sure rhythm, her drama veers too much toward tele-drama, and her film's too timid about its payoffs.

(Shown as part of the March 2006 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema Today series at Lincoln Center, Je vous trouve tres beau opened in Paris January 11, 2006.)

This is a nice romantic comedy about a French farmer who needs a wife (or cheap labourer) to run his farm, and who gets hitched to a young Romanian girl who needs money to raise her daughter.

The big problem with this movie is that the girl is tragically miscast. She is played by a talented young actress, who unfortunately can't patch over the fact that she is so painfully clearly out of her love interest's league. She's one of those surreally waifish girls the French adore so much. It's a case of the beauty and the beast, and it just doesn't hold water. Apart from that, a good movie. Until the farmer's visit to Romania to pick up his wife, it's a hilarious comedy, after that it's a complex (if implausible), and surprisingly intriguing, love story.

Michel Blanc is brilliant in a very difficult role. He's at the same time pompous and boyish, and would be the ideal match for an unlikely love story.

The unsung star of this movie is the entremetteuse, Eva Darlan. She is vivacious, beautiful and terribly funny. The movie loses a lot when she drops out of the plot. I think she would have been a much better, and not least much more credible, Elena.

Another problem with this movie is that they picked Romania as the rent-a-bride's country of origin. Fifteen years ago this would have been believable. Nowadays everybody knows that Romania isn't so bad as to make pretty girls so desperate to leave it that they'd gladly hitch up to a middle-aged French hillbilly. I don't understand why the writer didn't pick a more exotic and desperate country, Albania maybe or Ossietia or whatever.

If you're looking for humour and don't mind a hefty dollop of implausible romance, this is your movie.