Champagne Problems (2025) [TV-14] ***/****

A film review by Brian Orndorf for blu-ray.com on Nov. 19, 2025.

Once the director of Daredevil and Ghost Rider, Mark Steven Johnson is on a different career path these days. He’s in the business of making romantic comedies for streaming services, trying his luck with Hallmark Channel-style offerings of mild drama and feels that provide viewers with a sense of escapism as beautiful performers work with a screenplay of no particular emotional emphasis. It’s vanilla stuff, but Johnson locates a degree of charm in Champagne Problems, hitting all the highlights of fantasy as the main character faces a crisis of the heart and business ties during a holiday work trip to France. Johnson (who is also the writer) has no love for originality, but he finds some help from the actors, who maintain mild warmth and a sense of humor while the feature strives to conjure as much coziness as possible.

Sydney (Minka Kelly) is an employee at The Roth Group, working on acquisitions for the corporation, often competing with colleague Ryan (Xavier Samuel). Impressing her boss with her diligence, Sydney is sent to Paris to help negotiate a deal with Chateau Cassell, a champagne house looking to sell to a prepared buyer. Only in the country for a few days, Sydney is encouraged by her sister (Maeve Courtier-Lilley) to experience a little French magic, inspiring her to visit a bookstore, where she meets Henri (Tom Wozniczka), who’s happy to show the American a different side of Paris. Flirtations turn into a night of passion, but Sydney has a job to do, meeting Chateau Cassell owner Hugo (Thibault De Montalembert), and facing competition from business rivals Roberto (Sean Amsing), Otto (Flula Borg), and Brigitte (Astrid Whettnall). Prepared to make her best impression, endeavoring to win over Hugo and his demands for his business, Sydney is hit with a dose of reality when she learns Henri is actually Hugo’s son, and he has no patience for corporate predators.

Sydney isn’t an office terminator. She’s attempting to impress her boss and carefully handle acquisitions for the company, keeping her an approachable character. She’s also a supportive sister and continues to mourn the loss of her mother, who had her share of unrealized dreams. Kelly is particularly good at projecting warmth, and offers steady, reasonably sensitive work in Champagne Problems, which soon sends Sydney to France to prove her negotiation abilities, though she’s entering a country where she doesn’t even speak the language. The central meet cute in Champagne Problems occurs in a quaint bookstore, finding Sydney and Henri sparking immediate attraction, which turns into a night on the town, fueled by cups of hot wine and bonding over deceased mothers. Talk evolves into sex, but Johnson is sticking with his rom-com playbook, quickly disrupting post-coital bliss with business reality, sending Sydney to the glorious Chateau Cassell, where she’s forced to figure out what’s coming for her in terms of competition.

Comedic support is provided by other business reps, finding Roberto a fun-loving, flamboyant man who loves to drink and connect with others. Brigitte is serious about the mission, locating a bond with Hugo she tries to turn into a deal. And Otto is a nervous German sharing tales from his dark childhood, which gives Borg, a gifted comedian, chances to shine, especially when the character shares the legend of Krampus with the group. Champagne Problems sets up conflict between Sydney and Henri, who can’t trust the American once he learns who she is, and a challenge is supplied in presentations, putting the buyers in pitch positions that bring great stress to them. High jinks are minimal, extending to Brigitte pushing a cheese dinner on Sydney, who’s lactose intolerant. Winery challenges are more enjoyable, watching the gang compete in games of vine pruning and riddling, and there’s a debate about Die Hard to really sell the holiday spirit of the picture.

There’s a romance to sell in Champagne Problems, and Kelly and Wozniczka have decent chemistry, generating tenderness that’s challenged by outside interests. Johnson also works in father and son issues between Henri and Hugo, which helps to expand gentleness and concern. There’s seasonal immersion as well, following the characters as they visit Christmas markets and devour treats. Champagne Problems is easy on the senses and nicely acted, but Johnson can’t resist formulaic happenings, dragging the feature to a close with the same old moves seen in hundreds, if not thousands of these pictures. He goes for plasticized fantasy instead of trusting the moderate intimacy and light humor that’s worked for the first two acts of the movie. [Orndorf's rating: 6 stars out of 10]

Blogger's comment: A "champagne problem" describes a minor, trivial issue arising from affluence, privilege, or good fortune, like choosing between luxury cars or too many vacation options, contrasting with significant "real world problems". It's a problem where all choices are positive or desirable, often an annoyance of abundance rather than a genuine hardship, though sometimes these problems can feel more significant to the person experiencing them, as highlighted in Taylor Swift's song 'Champagne Problems'.

Labels: Christmas, comedy, Paris, romance
IMDb 60/100
MetaCritic (critics=50, viewers=tbd) 
RottenTomatoes (critics=72, viewers=65)
Orndorf's original review with pictures

A Man and a Woman ( Un homme et une femme) (1966) [NR] ****/*****

On the 2003 DVD release of A Man and a Woman, there is an interview with writer / director Claude Lelouch 37 Years Later with Claude Lelouch, in which he looks back and talks about how the film came to be.

He had just finished making Les Grands Moments and could not show the film because he did not have a distributor. He was broke and his film company was close to bankruptcy. So he did what he often did, which was to get in his car and drive to the beach - from Paris to Deauville on the Normandy coast. He arrived around 2 am, slept in his car and awoke around 6:30 am to see a woman walking on the beach with a child and a dog.

In that moment he had the inspiration for the film A Man and a Woman. Over the next four weeks he wrote the screenplay, having in mind Jean-Louis Trintignant to play Jean-Louis Duroc. When he showed the screenplay to Jean-Louis, he said yes immediately. Then Lelouch said that he had both Romy Schneider and Anouk Aimee (Anouk Aimée) in mind to play Anne Gauthier, and he asked Jean-Louis who his dream woman would be. Jean-Louis said he knew Anouk very well and Claude should just call her up. At first there was a little difficulty because Anouk did not like boats, so she did not want to do the boat scenes, but she finally gave in.

Lelouch shot the film over a period of four weeks, using a rented hand-held camera, and edited it in three weeks. He had intended to shoot it all in black and white because he could not afford color, but an American distributor bought the rights in the U.S. so Lelouch was able to shoot the exteriors in color and the interiors in black and white.

There are some interesting aspects to Lelouch's filmmaking style, particularly A Man and a Woman. He had a screenplay but did not let the actors read the dialogue. He described the scene beforehand, and if there was a particular sentence he wanted said, he would mention that, but, other than that, he let the actors improvise. Also, what he told Jean-Louis was not the same thing he told Anouk. He never rehearsed because he believed that after the first or second take, the spontaneity would be gone. Also, Lelouch did all the filming himself because it eliminated the natural time delay in telling the cinematographer what he wanted.

Sometimes he would play Francis Lai's score for the actors before the scene, especially if he couldn't find the right words to say to direct them. Also, after the scene was finished he would play the dialogue back for the actors so they could all get a feeling for how it was going.

Lelouch said that he was fascinated by people, that the human interraction was the important thing, and that was why he tried to shoot the film in real time, without rehearsals and very few takes. At some point the actors were living the story, which made the film as close to the truth as possible.

Interestingly, the rented camera was not soundproofed, so they would wrap it in a blanket for close-ups, but relied a lot on distance shots using a telephoto lens. This is why the film has the look that it does.

So, what about the story? Anne was a film script girl who met and married her husband Pierre (Pierre Barouh) on a project in which he was working as a stunt man. They had a child, a little girl named Françoise, and then Pierre was killed while filming a battlefield scene in a WWII film. To be able to continue working, Anne enrolled her little girl in a boarding school in Deauville.

Jean-Louis was a race car test driver for Ford, testing the new GT40 LeMans car and the Ford Formula 1 car. In a flashback we see him racing at LeMans, being involved in a horrific accident, undergoing a three-hour operation and then having his grief-stricken wife Valerie (Valerie Lagrange) take her own life at the hospital. And so, after that, Jean-Louis put his young son Antoine in the same Deauville boarding school. And Anne and Jean-Louis eventually meet at the boarding school when she misses her train back to Paris and the school headmistress (Simone Paris) introduces them.

It really is a very simple love story, the main complication being that Anne was very much in love with her husband Pierre, and, even though he had died, he was still alive for her. So she could not be present while she and Jean-Louis were making love in their Deauville hotel room, and even at the end of the film, we are not sure if she will be able to move forward.

In an interesting footnote, the film was shot between November, 1965 and January, 1966. Anouk Aimee and Pierre Barouh fell in love during filming, married three months later, on April 20, 1966, and divorced three years later, on March 17, 1969. 

For myself, this is almost a coming-of-age film. I was born in 1942, spent time in Paris in the summer of 1965, just before this was filmed, and appreciate the honesty and integrity with which the film was made.  

Labels: drama, romance, Paris, Sixties
IMDb 75/100
RottenTomatoes (critics=76, viewers=87)
DVD

Emily in Paris (2020) [TV-MA] ****

A film review by Roxana Hadadi for rogerebert.com on October 1, 2020.

Emily in Paris is a Bland Sex and the City Imitation with No Identity of Its Own

Darren Star’s TV shows have long been dismissed as frothy confections interchangeably obsessed with wealth and sex, but they’ve never been boring. With their perpetual angst and recurring bed hopping, Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place pushed back against the conservatism of primetime TV. Sex and the City not only revived HBO and introduced new generations to Manolo Blahnik shoes, but also brought questions about women’s sexual desire to the pop-culture forefront. And Younger has been a surprise hit for TV Land, morphing into a cult favorite that amusingly tackles questions of ageism and sexism.

None of the same praise can be leveled toward Star’s newest effort, Emily in Paris. All of the criticisms that have previously been leveled at Star are actually valid when it comes to the Netflix series, which is so devoid of narrative tension that it barely qualifies as entertainment. The show doesn’t seem to have an understanding of the social media or marketing industries on which it is focused; it mistakes having a closet full of designer clothes as possessing a personality; and it relies so much on farcical national stereotypes that it might bring back traumatizing flashbacks of Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte’s trip to Abu Dhabi in the loathsome Sex and the City 2. Lily Collins does her best at playing a Midwestern girl swept up in the glamour of Parisian living, but the show overall is irredeemably inauthentic and aggravatingly superficial.

From its very first scene, Emily in Paris introduces its protagonist, Emily Cooper (Collins), as a striver and a go-getter. On a cold Chicago morning, Emily runs five miles in 41 minutes, a pleased smile spreading over her face when her exercise app informs her that she shaved 18 seconds off her previous personal best. Emily is used to success: She’s a rising star at the Gilbert Group marketing firm, having made her name on pharmaceutical and geriatric care products, and she’s in a committed relationship. But when her pregnant boss (Kate Walsh) is forced to back out of a one-year work assignment in Paris with a smaller luxury marketing company, Savoir, that the Gilbert Group just acquired, the responsibility falls to Emily.

Emily sees the opportunity as an adventure, a chance to live in a beautiful place and further her career. There are just a few issues: She doesn’t speak French, and she doesn’t have any experience marketing the wares in Savoir’s portfolio, like couture fashion or fragrance. But no matter! Emily is sassy, and she says the words content and engagement a lot, and she has what the show insists are great ideas. Despite the French haters, Emily will make it work.

That broad generalization is about the level of detail that Star puts into characterizing the professional challenges that Emily encounters in her new position. The focus of Emily in Paris more often becomes how mean the French people are to Emily, from her cranky landlady to her boss, Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu), who is offended by everything about the American now in their office. Emily’s experience was in marketing IBS medication, Sylvia smirks, so how could she understand what the French people want in, say, lingerie? But expecting any Mad Men-style scenes explaining how Emily comes up with any of her immediately magical ideas is a fool’s errand, because Emily in Paris instead relies over and over again on how Emily’s winning American pluck helps her overcome any problem.

There is nothing more to Emily than the fantastic outfits (imagined by Sex and the City costume designer Patricia Field) that somehow fit in her cramped apartment with what is described as only one drawer. She is a social media savant who somehow accrues thousands of Instagram followers with eye-rolling captions like Drinking champagne in Champagne, and who claims to know the American consumer without any data or statistics to back that up. At least Sex and the City showed us Carrie writing, shopping, dating, and doing things in life that informed her work and her point of view. Whether you liked Ms. Bradshaw or not, you understood her, the tenors of her friendships, and how the kind of person she imagined herself as sometimes contrasted with how she actually acted. There is none of that depth in Emily in Paris, which is only interested in its titular character in terms of what she wears and who she kisses. And even then, it all falls flat - the love triangles, the workplace rivalries - because there’s no passion to anything Emily does. Collins is always ready with a broad smile and a peppy delivery, and she gamely plays along with how often Star writes in genitalia-related humor (a whole episode centered around the French word coq!), but Emily never feels like a real person.

Perhaps all of this would be excusable, or even tolerable, if Emily in Paris treated its main character with any skepticism at all. To the show’s credit, it briefly engages with this idea when Emily meets a client who calls her a basic bitch for decorating her purse with a keychain shaped like the Eiffel Tower. For a moment, it feels like the show’s incongruous details about Emily - that she grew up in the Midwest, but doesn’t know how to clean a cast-iron pan; that she’s been taking months of French classes, but doesn’t know that an aubergine is an eggplant; that she loves eating Parisian cuisine, but doesn’t know that the dessert crème brulee has a crisp top of burnt sugar - are hints that she isn’t as sophisticated as she would like to believe, and that she has in fact been performing a version of herself. But Emily in Paris veers away from that more subversive consideration of its protagonist by giving her an impassioned monologue about how basic bitches are the backbone of the fashion industry; the designer to whom she is delivering her lecture comes around, of course, and the two bond over the show Gossip Girl.

That setup - Emily correcting the French by proclaiming how great Americans really are - is one Emily in Paris returns to often, much like how Star had Carrie quit Paris in the final season of Sex and the City. The tactic is never as cute as the show thinks it is. And Emily in Paris is so certain of Emily’s perfection that there is no real impact when she makes a mistake, like pursuing a friend’s boyfriend, flirting with a client, or potentially ruining Paris Fashion Week. Problems are wrapped up within each episode’s 30-minute run time and previous subplots rarely carry over, which is particularly strange when the show attempts to tackle the #MeToo movement and the French perspective. Emily becomes the voice of harassed women, making a grand speech with a number of buzzwords about female strength and the male gaze. But that perspective comes out nowhere; before that point, we had no idea what Emily thought about feminism. And the subject never comes up again, although it would have been thought-provoking for the show to consider whether Emily’s ideology complicates the work she does with luxury brands that so often rely on traditional standards of female beauty to sell their products. Emily in Paris drops the conversation before it gets interesting.

Perhaps the only way to enjoy Emily in Paris is to watch it with the knowledge that the characters surrounding Emily are more intriguing than she is, like Mindy Chen (Ashley Park), the Chinese heiress-turned-reality-show-contestant-turned-nanny who befriends Emily and serves as her Samantha, or Emily’s boss, Sylvie, who has achieved so much success in a field dominated mostly by men, and who is understandably annoyed by Emily’s prying into her personal life. Leroy-Beaulieu’s performance is particularly strong, and Sylvie’s cynicism serves as a refreshing contrast to Emily’s relentless positivity. Also solid is the show’s direction, which is crisp and effective, although overly reliant on pop songs for scene transitions. Technically, Emily in Paris is well-made, but the show’s shortcomings - from its simplistic depiction of French culture to its paper-thin protagonist - make it more of an irritation than an indulgence. [Hadadi’s rating: 2 of 5 stars.

Labels: comedy, drama, fashion, Paris, romance
IMDb 73
MetaScore(critics=62, viewers=57) 
RottenTomatoesAverages (critics=63, viewers=64)
Link to review 

Blind Date (2015) [NR] ****

A film review by Brent Davidson, 25 Feb 2016

In a modern world of online dating, how often can one find themselves talking to someone they have only seen a couple of pictures of? Or even forming relationships over continents with someone they have never seen? All too often is probably the answer, but what if the person you were talking to was an (unfortunately) non-soundproofed wall away?

Machine (Whosit, Melanie Bernier) is a classical pianist breaking away from an ambiguously oppressive piano tutor, moving into a relatively crappy apartment in Paris - thankfully it has enough room for her baby grand piano! Machin (Whatsit, Clovis Cornillac) is a reclusive eccentric game inventor who enjoys peace and quiet while he works (which is always). What a conundrum they find themselves in! As always with close proximity and clashing personalities, they fall in love... But don't worry, definitely not a spoiler, it's super obvious.

Conspicuousness aside, what's great about this film is the implied back stories. Nothing is overly explained, but you know that both of these characters have come from a place of emotional pain and oppression, and in finding each other are released from that. It might be a credit to French cinema that these parts of their lives don't need explanation, just briefly mentioned to add some wonderfully subtle depth.

This subtlety doesn't really translate to the rest of the film; while very sweet, it follows a very formulaic romantic comedy - albeit a beautifully quirky one. The performances are all strong and the direction and writing is a little heavy-handed at times. Especially a certain orgasmic Chopin scene. Oh boy.

This is definitely a date night choice for this year's Alliance Française French Film Festival with enough quirk, charm and heart to keep everyone who sees it happy until the very end. Who doesn't love an uplifting rom-com? [Davidson’s rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars = 87.5%]

Labels: comedy, Paris, romance
Original title: Un peu beaucoup aveuglement
IMDb 66/100
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=63, viewers=77)
 
Original review 

 

The Hundred-Foot Journey (2014) [PG] ****

A film review by James Berardinelli, for ReelViews.net, on Aug. 7, 2014.

There's something gentle, charming, and old-fashioned about The Hundred-Foot Journey, a family-friendly motion picture from director Lasse Hallstrom based on the book by Richard C. Morais. A non-confrontational movie about the power of food and family, The Hundred-Foot Journey makes good use of the considerable talents of its veteran leads, Helen Mirren and Om Puri, to represent the cultural and culinary differences that exist between India and France. The sweep of the movie isn't all placid; elements of romance and whimsy are counterbalanced by instances in which the ugliness of xenophobia emerges. Only toward the end, when the narrative stumbles during an extended epilogue, does the concoction crumble a bit.

Director Hallstrom's last great movie was probably The Cider House Rules, which came out in 1999. In the interim, he has made some low-key, pleasant films (like Chocolat, An Unfinished Life and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen) and a couple of forgettable adaptations of Nicholas Sparks’ novels (Dear John and Safe Haven). The Hundred-Foot Journey is vintage Hallstrom - genial and meditative, focusing more on characters and emotions than an overcooked plot. The story is simple; the people inhabiting the movie make this worth seeing.

Om Puri plays the patriarch of the Kadam family, a group of six who have departed India and come to France to open a restaurant. He is accompanied by his three adult children: Mukthar (Dillon Mitra), Mahira (Farzana Dua Elahe), and would-be chef Hassan (Manish Dayal). Hassan has great talent in the kitchen but the death of his mother haunts him. Papa decides that the best place to start this new life is in an abandoned building near the outskirts of a town in the south of France, Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val. To him, it seems to be a great place to open Maison Mumbai but his children point out a problem: across the street is the highly respected restaurant of Le Saule Pleureur. The proprietress of this classical French establishment, Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren), is not keen on competition. Not dissuaded, Papa presses on. Meanwhile, Hassan forms a quasi-romantic friendship with Marguerite (Charlotte Le Bon), one of Madame Mallory's sous chefs. Soon, the two rival establishments are engaged in an all-out culinary war… until things go too far.

Hallstrom's filmmaking techniques are straightforward - the images lensed by his cinematographer, Linus Sandgren, emphasize the beauty of the terrain, creating an almost fairy tale locale. Although the movie is set in contemporary times (as evidenced by the presence of a cell phone early in the proceedings and modern equipment during the epilogue in Paris), it feels as if it's taking place in the '70s or '80s. There are rotary phones, people use bicycles or old cars for transportation, and there's nary a computer to be found. For the most part, the lifestyle in and around Saint-Antonin feels like it's frozen in an earlier, simpler era.

There's a sense that Hallstrom is attempting to develop the kind of food-saturated ambiance that has characterized films like Babette's Feast and Big Night. However, although the various dishes are lovingly presented, they don't reach into the stomach quite the way those earlier films did - although it wouldn't be entirely unexpected if some viewers expressed a desire for Indian cuisine for a post-movie repast. There's also an interesting montage of shots in which Hallstrom uses the chopping and dicing of vegetables to represent skirmishes in the ongoing conflict between Maison Mumbai and Le Saule Pleureur.

The Hundred-Foot Journey represents a pleasant diversion for those who have grown weary of traditional summer movie fare. The picture is about people and how they interact. There are no explosions or car chases. There are no sex scenes - only a few kisses and a little dancing. The movie is at times too sentimental and the story line is neither original nor surprising, but the production as a whole gains points for its unalloyed charm. This is one dish that has been cooked well enough to satisfy. [Berardinelli’s rating: 3 out of 4]

Labels: comedy, cross-cultural, drama, food, Paris, romance

Internet Movie Database 

Metacritic 55/100 

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=62, viewers=80) 

Blu-ray 

My Old Lady (2014) [PG-13] ***

A film review by Roger Moore, McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Sept. 8, 2014

Kevin Kline is a failed American writer, broke and in Paris to collect his inheritance — an ancient two-story apartment with an accompanying garden in the center city Marais district. Maggie Smith is the 90-something little old Englishwoman living in it. And Kristin Scott Thomas is the little old Englishwoman’s irritable, unmarried daughter who is determined that Mom won’t be moving anywhere, not any time soon.

Those are the makings of My Old Lady, a comedy of troubled family histories, Franco-American culture clashes and arcane real estate law. Because that’s the heart of the thing, this French concept of viager. Madame Girard (Smith) is grand-mothered into this apartment, which Jim Gold (Kline) inherited from a father he hadn’t seen in decades. He shows up to check out and sell this property for some much-needed cash, and there she is — immovable because of this viager. He owns the property, but only after she dies. The reverse annuity contract means that he has to pay rent to her, as well. It’s all in his dad’s will.

I own this apartment, Jim, whom Madame Girard insists on calling Mathias, mutters. And I own… you?

Jim was born in Paris and left when his parents split up. Now Jim is 57, penniless and with a property he can do nothing with… until she dies. What’s more, she insists on getting her rent. That’s a nice watch there, Mathias. You’re a pirate, Madame Girard!

Jim enlists a real estate agent (Dominique Pinon of Delicatessen) to explain viager contracts to him. Ever the greedy, impatient and yet practical American, he starts spiriting away furniture and such from the many unused rooms in the apartment, selling it to antique dealers for a little pocket money.

Meanwhile, the precise Madame Girard, a semi-retired English teacher who holds English conversation salons with a chef, a doctor and others who barter for her lessons, reveals a little of her story. She knew Jim’s father. WELL. And while she doesn’t know the details of the rift, she would like to hear it.

How do you get to be 57 and 11 months and have so little to show for it?

Then, there’s her daughter, Chloe (Scott Thomas). She’s easily rattled, a tad highly-strung and furious at this gauche American’s intrusion into their lives. She knows the law and isn’t above enforcing it. All Jim can do is scheme and sneak about, questioning Madame Girard’s doctor about her health, plotting a sale of this onerous contract to any wily Frenchman with more patience and the deeper resources it takes to wait the old lady out. Even her toasts at dinner — served Pre-CISE-ly at 8! — have a taunting tone to them. To good health! And LONG LIFE!

Veteran playwright Israel Horovitz (Author! Author!) adapted his play and directed this film of it, a theatrical movie that benefits from an immensely engaging and accomplished (two Oscar winners) cast. It’s a comedy of confessional monologues and overheard conversations, quite like a stage play at times.

But Smith and Kline and Scott Thomas give this a chance to sparkle. Kline dresses down wonderfully, and his offhand way with the Franglais dialogue beautifully clashes with Smith’s English precision. SPARE me the fromage! And Scott Thomas, as cutting in French as she is in English, makes a wonderfully spare sparring partner, vulnerable and wholly capable of lashing out.

My Old Lady gets tangled in its own feet in the third act as Horovitz tries to invest mystery where there is none and ratchets up the melodramatic connections between these three. But the accomplished acting of Smith, Kline & Scott Thomas make certain that this Paris trip is anything but a waste. [Moore’s rating: **½ out of 4]

Blogger’s comment: This is a dialogue-rich film but, sadly, there are no subtitles on the DVD or the Blu-ray versions. Maggie Smith is particularly hard to understand, partly due to her age, and partly because she interweaves French and English in her speech. If you have a hearing impairment or just enjoy watching a film with subtitles, you’ll be disappointed. Also, while the Blu-ray version is visually beautiful, the standard DVD appears grainy, dark and muddy.

Labels: comedy, cross-cultural, drama, Paris, romance

Internet Movie Database 

Metacritic 52/100 

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=58, viewers=64) 

Blu-ray 

Love at the Top (Le mouton enragé) (1974) [R] ****

Nicolas Mallet (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a timid, middle-aged, bank clerk, sees Marie-Paule (Jane Birkin), a beautiful but lonely young girl, gazing out at the Seine. She smiles at him and he offers to buy her a drink. When she agrees, he assumes that his luck has finally changed. But when later on they rent a room in a cheap hotel, he discovers that she is a prostitute. Before they make love, he hits her out of frustration, and then forces her to tell him that she came to the hotel because she truly wanted him.

Feeling expansive after his tryst, Nicolas meets his old friend Claude Fabre (Jean-Pierre Cassel), a frustrated, second-rate novelist, in their favorite bistro and tells him about his experience with Marie-Paule. Intrigued and inspired by Nicolas' accomplishment, Claude decides to teach him how to manipulate wealthy, influential people within the Parisian socio-economic system of which he is presently just a victim, in order to transform him into a man whom women cannot resist and with whom wealthy, politically-connected men will want to do business. And then Claude will use Nicolas’ transformation as the basis for his next novel. It’s a brilliant idea but will have unforeseen consequences.

Claude begins by suggesting that Nicolas seduce Roberte (Romy Schneider), the sexually frustrated wife of an aging professor. For a while Claude allows the lovers to enjoy their affair, and even plan to marry and have a child together, but eventually he decides that Roberte is not necessary to his plan for Nicolas and suggests that they separate, which Nicolas resists. Under Claude’s influence, Nicholas quits his job at the bank and begins to meet a succession of increasingly politically and economically influential men and women. Over time Nicholas changes and evolves until he has become the wealthy publisher of a National Enquirer-like scandal sheet, lives in a mansion, drives a Lamborghini and seduces movie actresses. Unfortunately, there are tragic consequences to Claude’s suggestions and Nicolas’ actions, and by the end of the film corpses litter the landscape.

Michel Deville directed Love at the Top (in French: Le mouton enrage) nearly a half-century ago, but its visual style and very intelligent social commentary give it a strikingly contemporary feeling. Love at the Top blends cynicism and social awareness to expose the hypocrisy of a society in which everyone has a price. Trintignant is the star of the film, but Cassel, Birkin and Schneider are equally impressive.

Labels: comedy, drama, Paris, Romy Schneider, satire, tragedy
IMDb 71/100
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=NA, viewers=72)
Blu-ray
Wikipedia Love at the Top (film)
Wikipedia Romy Schneider
NYTimes Archive

 

 

Goodbye Again (1961) [NR] ****

Based on the best-selling novel Aimez-vous Brahms? (Do You Like Brahms?) by Françoise Sagan, and directed by Anatole Litvak, Goodbye Again is a poignant, bittersweet romantic drama about the tragedy of impossible relationships and unrequited love.

Paula Tessier (Ingrid Bergman) is a forty-something interior decorator living in Paris in 1961. For the past five years she’s been in a relationship with Roger Demarest (Yves Montand), a farm tractor importer / exporter. Paula knows Roger is an inveterate womanizer who cheats on her with an endless line of vapid, young women, all of whom he calls Maisie. However, because of her low self-esteem, insecurity or the naïve belief that she can change Roger, Paula clings to him and refuses to end the relationship. Roger claims he loves Paula, but he’s too self-centered and egotistical to give up his freedom as a womanizer. If Paula was honest with herself, she’d recognize that Roger was never going to change and their relationship was going nowhere.

One day Roger gives Paula the name of a wealthy American divorcee, Teresa Van der Besh (Jessie Royce Landis), who needs a decorator for her Paris apartment. Mrs. Van der Besh has a 25-year-old son Philip (Anthony Perkins), an attorney who is studying international law with a Paris law firm. Philip is immature, melancholy, directionless, spoiled, and has a penchant for play-acting at being physically injured or deformed. When he meets Paula, he becomes hopelessly infatuated with the attractive, cosmopolitan middle-aged woman, and insists that their fifteen-year age difference is no barrier to a romance.

Flattered by the novelty of having a young admirer, and plagued by Roger's serial infidelities, Paula does little to discourage Philip's persistent advances. He drives her around town in his little Triumph TR3 sports car, revealing his romantic philosophy in the process. They lunch in an outdoor restaurant and attend a Brahms concert.

When Roger goes on an extended international business trip, Paula allows herself to begin an affair with Philip, convinced she can change him like she changes the décor of an apartment, even though she’s tried, without success, to change Roger. At this point, although she may not realize it, Paula is involved with two men who act like irresponsible little boys and refuse to grow up

[Twenty years later, in 1983, psychologist Dan Kiley would define this as the Peter Pan Syndrome. He would also use the term Wendy Syndrome to describe women who act like mothers to their Peter Pan partners. So both Roger and Philip are Peter Pan, and Paula is Wendy.]

Eventually, Paula can no longer deny the reality that Philip is irresponsible, childish, indecisive, indolent, slovenly and unable to develop a passion for his work. All of this, plus her self-conscious guilt over having such a young lover, ultimately forces her to end their brief affair.

Litvak uses the recurrent theme of circles to convey the sense that the lives of these three people are going nowhere. There are scenes in which Philip drives aimlessly around the traffic circles of Paris in order to pass the time, and after Paula breaks up with Philip, she watches him as he descends a long, spiral staircase. Brahms' Symphony No. 3, whose melody has a cyclical theme, is used throughout the film, including a haunting blues version sung to Philip by a night club singer (Diahann Carroll), which reflects the hopelessness of Philip’s love for Paula, and of Paula’s love for Roger.

Bergman, Montand and Perkins are all excellent in their roles, and Perkins, especially, shows exceptional depth as the lost and vulnerable Philip. Paula is tolerant, forgiving and continually disappointed, Roger is self-indulgent and egotistical, and Philip is directionless and hopeless. Sadly, there is nothing positive or uplifting about this romantic drama, just the reality that these three people have learned nothing and will continue to enact the same patterns over and over.

Labels: drama, Ingrid Bergman, Paris, romance, Sixties

Internet Movie Database 7.0/10 

RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=NA, viewers=76) 

How to Steal a Million (1966) [NR] ****

Starring Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole and directed by the great William Wyler, this is a light crime caper romantic comedy with a touch of drama. It falls somewhere between a pure romantic comedy and an art heist film and takes place in the Paris of 1965, in which everyone speaks English (which was not true – trust me, I was there).

Nicole Bonnet’s (Hepburn’s) father Charles (Hugh Griffith) is a master forger of all types of art with which he supplements his own collection. Many of his pieces have been sold at auction for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he has yet to be identified as a forger.

He has just loaned out a family heirloom, the Cellini Venus, to a local Paris museum, as the centerpiece of a large exhibition. The piece is a fake that had been crafted by his father, Nicole’s grandfather around 1910, using Nicole’s grandmother as a model.

Later that same evening, Nicole surprises a handsome young gentleman (O’Toole) taking the fake Van Gogh her father had just finished painting off the wall. Nicole thinks he is trying to steal it and she accidentally shoots him with one of her father’s antique muzzle-loading pistols. Then, feeling guilty, she bandages his flesh wound and drives him home to his suite at the Ritz Hotel, in his lovely primrose yellow 1965 Jaguar E-Type convertible.

The next day a representative from the museum calls on her father to have him sign a form authorizing a million dollar insurance policy on the Cellini Venus. Then he tells him he’s authorized a professional inspection of the sculpture to insure that it is genuine.

Panicked, Nicole decides her only course of action is to steal the Cellini Venus from the museum, and for that she needs her burglar’s help. She contacts him at his hotel, they meet, and he begins to put a plan together to steal the sculpture.

The crime caper scenes are as much fun as the rest of the film and, in fact, provide an opportunity for more comedy. Naturally, the plan works and they get away with the sculpture, falling in love in the process.

In the end, Nicole finds out that her burglar, Simon Dermott, is actually a well-respected private investigator specializing in art forgery and in security systems for museums and galleries. He’s not a thief and, in fact, this was his first art heist too. The reason he was in the Bonnet house initially was to obtain evidence that Nicole’s father was an art forger. Naturally, Nicole fears that Simon will expose her father, but, instead, he convinces her father that it is time to retire. In the final scene, Simon and Nicole drive off down the streets of Paris, with a beautiful life ahead of them.

This is simply a delightful 1960s romantic comedy, and both Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole are terrific. There is reasonable romantic chemistry between them, although they played it the way it was typically played in the 1960s: O’Toole shows little emotion and focuses on the task at hand while Hepburn expresses the emotion and focuses on the relationship, hardly being able to keep her hands off O’Toole.

Blogger’s comment: This 1966 release was filmed in Paris between July and September 1965. By coincidence, I was a young USAF officer stationed at a USAF military base near Kaiserslautern, Germany. I owned a 1960 Porsche Roadster and Paris was only a 6-hour drive, partially on autobahn. I just happened to be in Paris for a week in July, 1965, so I was there while this film was being made and it brought back some wonderful memories.

Labels: comedy, crime, Paris, romance, Sixties
IMDb 76/100
RottenTomatoes Averages (critics=70, viewers=82)