20 ans d'écart

A fair good French comedy. Not very good, not very bad. The main actress is gorgeous and you don't believe a single minute she is 38, but the difference gap works well in the movie. I would recommend it for a cold night. If you don't have a lot of expectations, c'est marrant (you'll have fun!)

This movie is a perfect example that theese relationships (younger man - older woman) can work. For me, this movie is a solid 10. Awesome acting from both of them and you can really feel the romantic vibe between them. For me this is the best romance movie of this type that i ever saw!

The plot is formulaic and predictable for a romantic comedy, except with the interesting twist that this time the two leads have a purportedly 20-year age gap.

I will say that, perhaps because I don't understand Portuguese (I saw a Portuguese dub) and the subtitles weren't of good quality, the dialogue and situations didn't seem to be as bad as they would be in a typical US production. Although maybe that's just up to the novelty of it and it comes from a uniquely French tradition.

What really makes this a compelling film and worth watching, though, is the direction and performances of the two leads. The woman who plays Alice very skillfully conveys a career woman being assailed on all sides and practically shoved into having a relationship that someone in her position in real life would consider absurd, but then coming to develop ambivalent feelings toward the teenager she's forced to spend time with. Now, the romance isn't very well-developed - there's never really any reason for her to be attracted to Balthazar: neither fetish nor dashing confidence nor extreme attractiveness nor skill with women on his part. However, his female counterpart does look like someone whose emotions for the boy germinate despite her logical mind trying to pull away in the opposite direction. It's an internal battle conveyed in half-forced smiles and sighs of half-repressed frustration.

As for the Balthazar actor, he seems to be brimming with attraction and hope toward this older woman. At least on his side, it's a realistic portrayal - an attractive woman unexpectedly gives him the time of day and he does his best to please her, coming to grow attached in the process. It may have been the lighting, but the scene in the auditorium with his eyes twinkling as Alice crushes him slowly was powerful.

Highly enjoyable, to say the least.

Honourable Mentions: Down to You (2000). Boy falls in love with girl but girl wants to devote herself to fun and career. Another pretty decent story about a young man in love with an amivalent woman.

20 ans d'écart is the prototype of the not fully achieved French comedy, where the premise is rather interesting but doesn't go the distance.

Indeed, the script first sets in a very efficient and rather dynamic way the base of the plot, with a few touches of humour perfectly spicing up the dialogues. But unfortunately, the more the movie goes, the more you realise the writers didn't quite know where to go. The pace drops, the lines become less incisive, and the story struggles to get a second wind until the happy ending.

Overall, the movie is too conventional and doesn't exploit enough its comical resources. The characters lack depth but the duo of actors works well even though Niney overacts a bit, probably due to how his character was written.

Everything isn't to be thrown away therefore, far from it, but with a little more ambition, this could have been a good to very good comedy.

... if the lead actress Virginie Efira was made of lava...she would not be any hotter. In fact scrap this the only way you could make her less hot would be to pour lava on her that would cool things down; Somebody in one of the other reviews used the Word sultry that very much Covers it.

Okay so we have one of the sexiest Belgian actresses ever seen on film actually she's mostly Greek she is this rare entity the Greek-Belgian goddess; I think 99.9% of men will agree and probably most women ... now then we have a younger man Pierre Niney but this is where we need to get into mathematics who are we trying to kid here?

The film was made in 2013 so by my calculations lead actress here was 36 years old. That is probably 10 years too young to be playing a cougar. As regards the young man Pierre he was then 24 years old Just a smidgeon too old to be a greenhorn university student

Maybe not but the difference between the two whicheverway you cut it is only 12 years and since most people watching this film will be adults they can tell the difference between somebody half the other's age like maybe in the case of the father Charles Berling in the story here with the girl the young man used to go to school with that is a clear difference in age but 12 years cmon

So that bit is really not plausible.

The story is boilerplate romantic comedy whether a US French any country it makes no difference it is always the same oh shock horror they shouldn't be together then they are then they fall out and they make up Yawn yawn yawn yawn

But it doesn't matter because the acting of both of the main characters and some of the ancillary is really awesome and quite frankly personally I could watch Virginie doing the washing up tidying the house going for a walk reading the bible looking into space Performing surgery i would be a happy Viewer. Can we say these things in 2022? Yes I suppose we can...

The young man is very good some people accusing Him of overreacting towards the end but that is quite good what he does there; he is on the register of the Comédie-Française And you do not get in there by accident

• Overall this is really really amusing extremely entertaining Paris as in most films with Paris in them is like a third character here and it is gorgeous as always so if you want something which doesn't tax your mind if you want to see one of the most beautiful actresses in action knock yourself out
• This is not Kierkegaard or Heidegger this is a romantic comedy...