The promising plotline of "Beautiful Lies" is based on anonymous love letters - an idea which has its own cinematic lineage in the French classic "Cyrano de Bergerac" and Steve Martin's 1987 American update "Roxanne".
The difference here is that the letter writer's desire to remain anonymous has more to do with the pain/pleasure of unrequited love than a desire to conceal their appearance. Jean, the writer, is handsome but shy while the intended recipient is Emilie, the confident co-owner of a beauty parlour.
Emilie receives an anonymous love letter from Jean, who works as her maintenance man while hiding a tainted but illustrious academic career as a translater. Emilie assumes, from the literary way the letter is written, that it must be from an older man. In a misguided attempt to stop her lovelorn mother continuing to hold a torch for her long-gone father, she redirects it to her mother and the beautiful lies begin.
Part of the delight of this film is that Audrey Tautou's gamine looks and dark elfin locks hide a genuinely manipulative character and Sami Bouajila's Jean is smart enough to both recognise it and reflect it back to her. The comedy and the romance both spring quite naturally from Emilie's evermore complicated efforts to sustain the deceit and the awkward confrontations which result from its unravelling.
While the film might go one plot twist to far, it never becomes farcical and that is a tribute to both the writing and the acting. In "Beautiful Lies" Audrey Tautou teams up again with "Priceless" Director Pierre Salvadori and it is proving to be a fruitful partnership in terms of creating great French films for international audiences - even if some of them have to stop laughing long enough to read the subtitles.
Monday, 16 January 2012
Friday, 6 January 2012
A mike stand and a bottle of water
Apart from the comedian, that's all you normally see onstage at a comedy gig.
Which is fine if you're in a comedy club but in a theatre it can look a bit effortless - as in, lacking effort. The lights pick out all the shabby spots on the bare stage - the slightly ripped curtain, the duct tape marks on the floor, the unused trap door. And when the comedian comes on, the lights pick out all the shabby spots on them too - the ill-fitting jeans, the cig packet in the back pocket, the crumpled flat-dry jumper.
The whole thing is danger of looking a bit unloved - not a great start if you're setting out to make the audience love you.
So should a comedy set have a set?
It depends on what, as a comedian, you're trying to do.
If your act hovers in the rich borderland between comic routine and theatrical monologue then it might make sense. Which is probably why the last time I saw Daniel Kitson telling his entrancing stories onstage he was surrounded by suitcases which he had personally turned into tiny houses with windows which lit up. Depending on your perspective, this was either a beautiful visual accompaniment to a story about moving house or an intricate demonstration of an alarming amount of creative displacement activity.
If you really wish you were a rock star but your songs keep turning out funny, you might still want to go to town on the back-combing, stadium lights and wind machines when you sing them (step forward, in your bare feet, Tim Minchin). A Tim Minchin gig is arguably a comedy show not a comedy set and it is created for the arena as much as for the theatre - I am not sure how many comedy clubs come with grand pianos.
On the other hand, if you don't even want a microphone to get between you and your audience you might just pad on stage dressed for a night in front of the telly and in your (did I dream it?) socks. Reginald D. Hunter was clearly here to chat and his informal start set the stage in a very different way for a remarkably intimate show in a 1300 seater theatre.
The point is that whatever they were, or weren't surrounded by, it was clear that all three of these comedians had thought about how they could create a conducive atmosphere for their comedy. They didn't just go for the default setting: that mike stand and that bottle of water.
Which is fine if you're in a comedy club but in a theatre it can look a bit effortless - as in, lacking effort. The lights pick out all the shabby spots on the bare stage - the slightly ripped curtain, the duct tape marks on the floor, the unused trap door. And when the comedian comes on, the lights pick out all the shabby spots on them too - the ill-fitting jeans, the cig packet in the back pocket, the crumpled flat-dry jumper.
The whole thing is danger of looking a bit unloved - not a great start if you're setting out to make the audience love you.
So should a comedy set have a set?
It depends on what, as a comedian, you're trying to do.
If your act hovers in the rich borderland between comic routine and theatrical monologue then it might make sense. Which is probably why the last time I saw Daniel Kitson telling his entrancing stories onstage he was surrounded by suitcases which he had personally turned into tiny houses with windows which lit up. Depending on your perspective, this was either a beautiful visual accompaniment to a story about moving house or an intricate demonstration of an alarming amount of creative displacement activity.
If you really wish you were a rock star but your songs keep turning out funny, you might still want to go to town on the back-combing, stadium lights and wind machines when you sing them (step forward, in your bare feet, Tim Minchin). A Tim Minchin gig is arguably a comedy show not a comedy set and it is created for the arena as much as for the theatre - I am not sure how many comedy clubs come with grand pianos.
On the other hand, if you don't even want a microphone to get between you and your audience you might just pad on stage dressed for a night in front of the telly and in your (did I dream it?) socks. Reginald D. Hunter was clearly here to chat and his informal start set the stage in a very different way for a remarkably intimate show in a 1300 seater theatre.
The point is that whatever they were, or weren't surrounded by, it was clear that all three of these comedians had thought about how they could create a conducive atmosphere for their comedy. They didn't just go for the default setting: that mike stand and that bottle of water.
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