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.
Very true and good article!
ReplyDeleteThanks - hopefully it will inspire a few people to rent it out. The sumptuous south of France setting is a good enough reason to watch it in winter for those starved of a bit of sun.
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