Mon meilleur ami

MON MEILLEUR AMI (MY BEST FRIEND) is a gift from France to movie lovers. Though it can be considered a 'comedy' in the French tradition, it is also a fine examination of the importance of friendship in a world too cluttered with 'acquaintances' passing as friends. Just what a 'friend' means is only one important message of this lovely film: the manner through which we identify meaningful relationships is the other.

Writer/Director Patrice Laconte (Intimate Strangers, The Man on the Train, The Widow of Saint-Pierre, The Girl on the Bridge, Tango, The Hairdresser's Husband, Monsieur Hire, etc) knows how to take an idea and allow it to blossom without distortion or preaching. He understands the intimacy of friendships and knows how to draw superlative performances from his actors - an obvious extension of the concept of friendship! François Coste (Daniel Auteuil) is an antiquities dealer with his lesbian partner Catherine (Julie Gayet), and while François is a successful businessman, he is a self-centered isolationist who has never been able to make or retain friends, a fact that is put before him at the scantily attended funeral of an associate. François and Catherine attend an auction where François pays a high price for an antique Greek vase, a receptacle for the tears of an ancient man's friend. This purchases encourages Catherine to challenge François to a bet: François must introduce to Catherine a 'best friend' within ten days or the vase belongs to her. François, oblivious to the fact that he is completely without friends (including his own daughter Louise - Julie Durand), accepts the challenge and so the search for friends begins. François exhausts his possibilities, all the while being driven about Paris by a loquacious taxi driver 'Balanchine'/Bruno Bouley (Dany Boon) who has his own problems: he has worked all his life to prepare for a fact-answering position on a television game show, but suffers from a severe case of nerves when before a crowd. Very gradually the two men bond and François realizes Bruno is the closest thing he has to a friend. A plan is hatched which will apparently benefit both men's weaknesses, but as life often does, surprises alter the plans. How the film ends is so tender that sharing it would destroy the fluid progression of Leconte's storytelling.

Both Auteuil and Boon are superb in the leading roles and yet every minor role is in the hands of the cream of France's crop of supporting actors. The pacing of the film, the cinematography, the musical score, and the script are perfectly melded. Yet it is the magic hand of Patrice Laconte that makes this movie understated and wholly credible, allowing the audience to relate to the sensitive weaknesses of the two men and grow into their tenuous relationship. It is a joy to watch and remember. Grady Harp

"If you tame me, we will need each other. You will be for me unique in the world. I will be for you unique in the world". So says the fox to the Little Prince, in Antoine De Saint-Exupéry's "Le Petit Prince," when they meet up in the Little Prince's journey. The lonely Prince has asked the fox to play with him but the fox says no, I have no wish to play with you. I am not a tame fox. A discussion then follows as to the meaning of "to tame." The fox answers as above.

This passage, which appears in a journal kept by the taxi-driver Bruno (Dany Boon), is at the heart of this charming and beautifully executed film of discovery, loss, and redemption. True friends are special to each other because they have discovered a need that the other can fulfill. Because of this acknowledged need, they are special (unique) to each other forever.

This is a hard lesson for Monsieur Françoise Coste (Daniel Auteuil), an antiques dealer, to learn, since he believes that he is on top of the world, successful, an engagement calendar full of lunch dates and meetings with business associates, a daughter in college, and a girl friend who seems to adore him. He doesn't think he needs anyone. He's in charge. When he is hit with the hard truth that none of these people (with the exception, perhaps, of his girlfriend), would come to his funeral, he is forced to admit that not only does he have no friends but also that no one likes him.

Being the arrogant, ego-driven man that he is, he denies that he has no friends, and in a basically silly bet, accepts a challenge from his antiques gallery partner, Catherine (Julie Gayet) to prove this hard truth false. The prize is an expensive Egyptian vase that Coste has just purchased, against the wishes of Catherine, because he took a fancy to the vase. In the process of coming up with a "best friend" within 10 days, to win the bet, Coste learns what friendship means, and just how far off the mark he really was.

I am a great fan of Daniel Auteuil, and love him in this role as much as in any of his previous roles. Of course, he is greatly helped along by Dany Boon, who plays the talkative, easy-going, friendly taxi driver, Bruno. Equally friendless, but not equally unlikeable, Bruno good-naturedly, almost affectionately, agrees to Coste's request to become his teacher in friend-making.

First, Coste has to admit that he has a need, or problem. "A friend is someone you can call at 3:00 in the morning to help you with a problem," says Bruno.

"I don't have any problems," replies Coste.

"Yes, you do," retorts Bruno, smiling, "you don't have anyone you can call at 3:00 in the morning." One of the best lines in the film! There are more.

When I left this film, I felt a sense of sheer happiness unlike anything I've felt in a long time. Because I had been late to the film (traffic), I stayed for the next showing to catch those missed 15 minutes, and ended up staying for 45 minutes. I am not sure just yet why it gave me such a sense of joy and hope, but perhaps because it deals so honestly and with such good nature this painful issue of finding, making, and keeping friends in our modern, fast paced, success-driven world. A business contact is not a friend, and no matter how full our business calendars are, its whom we meet in the café for a heart-to-heart chat over an espresso or go for a Sunday morning walk with that is the real measure of our success in the world. If that sounds too tame a definition of friendship, well, Director Patrice Leconte sees it differently.

Catherine (Julie Gayet) and François (Daniel Auteuil) are partners in a Paris antique business. He has just paid so much at auction for a large Greek vase--itself a symbol of a friend's loyalty--that he's put the firm at risk. Catherine, who accuses François of having no friends, makes him accept a bet. Within ten days he must either come up with a "best friend" or forfeit the vase. François's self esteem now being as much at risk as the firm's finances, he bends to the task.

In the course of telling its story this film glances at some searching questions about friendship. What IS a friend? How many TRUE friends does anyone have? But as a comedy—certainly a very dry one—it ends by being neither revelatory nor funny. Sometimes it doesn't even feel like a comedy, and director Patrice Lecante and his writers may not have quite made up their minds what they were doing in the first place.

Certainly the raw material of comedy is here. All François' bustling efforts to dredge up any real chums, let alone a "best friend," are ludicrous failures. He has a daughter, Louise (Julie Durand), and business associates: no friends there. A high school classmate he thinks was a pal despises him. Everyone says he's an odious fellow, a "con"—an asshole. Along the way François meets a companionable and chatty taxi driver named Bruno (Dany Boon) who takes him around, keeps him company, and gives him tips. Bruno comes up with a "three-S" rule for "friend"-making: be Sociable, Smiling and Sincere. The trouble is that for all his chattiness—he's a wannabe quiz show contestant who compulsively feeds factoids to his fares—Bruno is a misfit with no friends himself. His sociability and smile don't mean he knows how to relate to people: the trivia recitations get in the way of that. As for François, he's clearly a person too wrapped up in himself ever to have connected with others. He goes to a lecture by the author of a self-help book on friendship, but the homely myopic man who befriends him afterward, he quickly abandons.

It's no great secret that this will develop into an offbeat buddy picture featuring François and Bruno. Somehow they will betray, abandon, and find each other again. If a friend is somebody you can call on in your most need, they've turned out to be true pals. Or have they? This, like various other key points, is an issue that's flirted with only to be left hanging.

Director Patrice Leconte, who made 'Monsieur Hire,' 'The Man on the Train,' and by now three films starring Auteuil including 'The Widow of Saint Pierre,' is doing something less ambitious here—but there are haunting, dark elements. We are all alone—as Mrs. Mulwray says in 'Chinatown,' "Isn't everybody?"—and Bruno says so too. Auteuil, who played the angst-ridden TV intellectual in Michael Haneke's 'Caché' recently, and once played the frozen soul of Claude Sautet's 'Un Coeur en hiver,' steps easily into the role of an urbane individual whom nobody likes. But though Auteuil is convincing, he isn't really droll. And the film is full of gaps and puzzles. If François is so odious, why is a good-looking woman wanting to spend her nights with him, and why are all those colleagues so willing to dine with him? Where are THEIR friends? A late sequence in which Bruno finally gets his wish and appears on a French version of "So You Want to Be a Millionaire?" provides a welcome change of scene and mood; but it's also painfully drawn out, and its payoff is obvious.

The principals are good and the package is glossy and attractive. But Leconte has failed to achieve effective comedy or resolved his subject satisfactorily. At the end, when we see his associates and partner celebrating François' birthday a year later, are we to believe he's now well-liked? Excuse me, but what happened? Hasn't the film failed to show the main action it was looking for, François' transformation? Doubtless these questions are not supposed to occur to us; but 'Mon Meilleur ami' is the victim of its own Parisian cleverness. It's too cool and elegant ever to fall into sentimentality. But it provides no credible examples of friendship or of persons who're whole and deeply connected. Catherine has a lesbian girlfriend in her bed at home, but there's no information about this relationship. Bruno's parents are nice little nonentities. Most other characters are mere walk-ons. The well-oiled hinges of this film's scenery move too smoothly and efficiently to allow for ordinariness, specificity, or warmth. Bruno's cheer is obviously fragile. He suffers from a lost relationship, as does François. Though it makes you think, in the end this film like its protagonist seems more manipulative than humane. "I no longer want to do overly serious movies," Leconte has said. He's achieved that goal. But unfortunately what he's made instead is one that's merely empty and a little sad.

I gave him 10/10, even if the screenplay isn't so strong, because this is a movie perfect in his genre:

I'm not a moralist, and I don't become upset if I see a comic film that uses vulgarities with the aim to make me laugh; if the movie is funny, I think it reached his goal, and it has my applause.

But this one, that hasn't vulgarities at all, made me laugh even much. In years in which seems that vulgarity is the better way to make laugh, this is a masterpiece.

A masterpiece to show everyone to spend 2 enjoyable hours together.

Talking about his weaknesses, I thought that last scenes could be directed in a better way, but the excellent Auteil's performance and the funnies gags, according to my tastes, fulfill everything.

Patrice Leconte's "Mon Meilleur Ami" (My Best Friend), as the title suggests, is all about friendship. Real friendship.

Francois (French star Daniel Auteuil) is a middle-aged Parisian with everything you could ever want - a rewarding job as an antique dealer, a stylish flat, a loving girlfriend, and a teenage daughter. What he doesn't realize, but soon brutally learns, is that he doesn't have any true friends!

The bet is made. Francois has 10 days to come up with a best friend to show off to his colleagues. If he doesn't, he will lose his newly acquired antique Greek vase. And so, the search begins. What we witness is a hilarious quest to find true friends, one that resonates well in real life. As Francois rides through Paris in search of his bet-winning friend, he encounters a trivia-know-it-all cab driver, Bruno (captivating Dany Boon). As the two meet over and over again in comical situations, we begin to wonder, did Francois finally meet his new best friend?

It's fascinating to watch these charming characters go through these experiences with friendship, something that we have all gone through. You will go through a whole range of emotions as you watch this film, laughter, shock, sadness. But in the end, this film reminds us what is really important in life - our relationships with people.

This film reminds of "Le Diner de Cons" with the great Jacques Villeret, and as that film, this one has something for everyone. I strongly recommend you to see it!

(My review is from the world premiere on September 12th, 2006 at the Toronto International Film Festival.)