Prête-moi ta main

In Paris, the forty-three year-old Luis "Pipou" Costa (Alain Chabat) is a immature bachelor and successful creator of perfumes and does not have any intention to get married. However, his oppressive family that is ruled by six women - his mother Geneviève Costa (Bernadette Lafont) and his sisters Catherine (Véronique Barrault), Axelle (Marie-Armelle Deguy), Carole (Katia Lewkowicz), Maxine (Louise Monot)and Marie (Luce Mouchel) decide that Luis shall get married and they try to find a wife for him among their friends.

When Luis is having lunch with his best friend Pierre-Yves (Grégoire Oestermann), he learns that his regular waitress is depressed and not working because her fiancé left her a couple of days before their wedding. Luis plots a scheme to hire a woman to pose as his fiancée and to leave him on the day of their marriage in order that his family does not bother him anymore. He hires Pierre's sister Emmanuelle "Emma" (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who is trying to adopt a child from Brazil, to be his bride-to-be and to leave him at the altar on the day of their wedding. However his plan fails since his family loves Emma and when she does not show up to marry him, his mother has to go to the hospital and his sisters blame him. Now Luis hires Emma again to act like a bitch to make his family hate her. Meanwhile Luis falls in love with Emma and when his plan works and Emma leaves him, he misses her. Would it be too late for him to declare his love for Emma?

"Prête-moi ta main" is a delightful romantic comedy with an entertaining story, funny situations and very well acted. The charming, elegant and beautiful Charlotte Gainsbourg is one of my favorite actresses and I loved to see her in a light movie after several Lars von Triers features. The characters are interesting and we can see the stingy guy, the family that likes to snoop and interfere in the life of the members and an independent woman that is the opposite of the other women. In the end, "Prête-moi ta main" is a French comedy that will make your day (or night) better. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Noiva Perfeita" ("The Perfect Bride")

"I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single" is an extremely funny film. I really enjoyed watching a family try to control a 43 year-old's life. It seems to be such a foreign idea that a family would go through such extremes but makes for a great movie. I also enjoyed seeing how the director and scene writers decided to make the main character use his heartbreaks as encouragement for a career. The fact that he was able to channel those feelings into making perfumes that reminded him of the women who broke is hear was incredible.

The director in this movie, Eric Lartigau, brought his skills from working not only as a director but also as a former co-writer, assistant director, and actor to this movie. Though he was more involved with directing TV series, his knowledge brought him great success in this movie. Following this film, he continued with his career and got nominated for a Cesar Award as Best Adapted Screenplay for the movie "The Big Picture."

This movie brings up the involvement family members have in each other lives as well as the extremes people go through for their families to back off. These ideas seem to be the most interesting because they are working against each other. On one hand, Luis (the main character) is trying to get his nagging sisters and mother off of his back in finding a wife because they are just annoying him while all they want is for him to have a wife to be happy and do things for him. It is a bit of a Catch 22 because you want your family to be happy, but at what expense? Will you nag them to death because you think it is best for them? Hopefully not.

The setting of this movie was very modern. It gives the audience a great full view of their lives. It made the movie more believable and realistic by having such a broad and diverse setting throughout the film. It shows multiple sections of the office wear Luis works as well as his house, mother's house, etc. I also think Lartigau did a wonderful job in directing. He also got the actors feel believable. By the end of the movie, you feel a sense of a connection with each person. You feel exactly how they do and grow a sense of respect for each character.

From the opening shots of the lead actor, we are given a early view on how so many mens lives are run by the women in them, and the humour that comes thru with all that goes on in the day to day of 'normal' life.

Eric Lartigau, the director picks up on how so many European men feel that they are in complete control of their lives, yet without the help/support of the women around them cannot seem to make things work. The use of facial image throughout the film is superb, and his clever positioning of the senior member of the family (mother) is spot on.

While there are more than enough laughs in the movie, it still deals with single parents/adoption and the strength of family in society. Truly rewarding to watch, and again one that only the French seam capable to make.

So far one of the best 50 or so Films I have seen this year, and well worth a five start rating. I look forward to adding this one to the DVD collection when it is released and highly recommend it to all ages.

I love romantic comedies. I love French cinema. Charlotte Gainsbourg was fine in Claude Miller's La Petite Voleuse. But since then, her charmless personality seems to be the death-knell for everything she touches.

This is a theoretically fun movie, in which a middle-aged guy tries to get one over on his domineering family. And, being a romantic comedy, we know the way it's going to go. But Gainsbourg seems so affected as the hired-in fiancée, and so emotionally wooden, that even if she had the 'nichons' that her partner would have preferred (as I would), it is doubtful that she would have saved this forlorn if not totally lost film.

I love love. I'm a sucker for romantic comedies and as of late, I've been on a foreign film binge. Enter stage left: I Do. While undeniably predictable, the film has its charms and throws in some obstacles I didn't expect and found myself smiling as I watched it unfold.

However, my main concern was the lack of chemistry between Luis and Emma. There were no looks of intrigue, scarcely any playful banter between the two - for the most part, their interaction seemed to be simply what Luis intended it to be - a business interaction. Perhaps I'm terribly picky, but I found the leap between the conspirers' platonic relationship to romance to be a sudden leap rather than one with a bit of a build up. In that case alone, I was mildly disappointed.

But with that aspect aside, the actors do do a good job with the script they're given. Luis's family, although somewhat irritating, are simultaneously charming and overbearing and I warmed up to them in the end. I really think the men need a bit more screen time as they were hardly in it and my favorite scene (the scene with the M6) happened to be one of their few. The wedding comes too quickly for my taste, but with a few more scenes to build character relationships, this film would've been a knock out. So not bad, but not exactly the best film either.