Dir. Pascal Chalmeuil , France / Monaco , 2010, 105 mins, French with subtitles
Cast: Romain Duris, Vanessa Paradis, Julie Ferrier
Review by Carol Allen
This is a Gallic rom com which has been a huge hit in its native France .
The heartbreaker of the title is Alex (Duris), who's made a career out of breaking up unsuitable love affairs at the request of disapproving parents and such. Along with his sister (Ferrier) and her husband Marc (François Damiens), Alex uses a variety of tricks, including most importantly his own good looks and devastating charm, to break up impending marriages by showing the bride that her fiancé isn't as desirable a match as Alex himself is. After which he collects the money and runs.
We are introduced to Alex and his career in the sand dunes of Egypt , where he is making like a contemporary Rudolph Valentino to Florence (Amandine Dewasmes ), who has a really rubbish boyfriend, so we're not unsympathetic to Alex's objective here. Having captured our interest with this tasty little hors d'oeuvre, the film then moves on to the main course, when Alex is commissioned to break up the engagement of independent minded heiress Juliette Van der Back (Paradis) to rich philanthropist Jonathan ( Lincoln ). Her controlling father (Jacques Frantz) hires Alex to do what he does best, because Papa disapproves of the match for no specified reason. Maybe he just doesn't like Englishmen, which is the only motive one can see for casting Lincoln in the somewhat unrewarding role as the rather stuffy Jonathan. But Juliette isn't the usual pushover for Alex's wiles. He has to work really hard on this one. He's also up against the clock, in that he desperately needs the money, as a gang of heavies are after him and his assistants for an unpaid debt. And things are further complicated when, surprise, surprise, Alex falls in love with his mark.
French rom com tends to have a bit more irony and darkness in its soul than the American product, as in Priceless (Hors de Prix) , in which Audrey Tatou also played a character motivated by money rather than love. Duris, who was very good as Molière in the film of that name, while not conventionally good looking, has a certain charisma but he doesn't quite convince in this. Paradis engages more of our empathy as the somewhat snotty but very accomplished Juliette. The most memorable characters though are Juliette's best friend, the totally ghastly Sophie (Héléna Noguerra), who fancies herself as an irresistible femme fatale and goes in for toe curlingly embarrassing attempts at seduction and Damiens as Alex's brother in law Marc. He's the team's IT expert, who yearns to be the main man. He has some very funny moments. There's also a wicked spoof on one of the sequences from Dirty Dancing , which works well.
Overall though as a romantic comedy this lacks the necessary champagne fizz, bubble and indeed wit. It's all a bit flat. It also suffers from the common rom com malaise of putting all sorts of desperate and unlikely obstacles in the way to string out the resolution of the film, before the leading actors finally fall into each others arms.
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