French Film (2008)

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I caught this is a repeat on BBC i-Player and I was very pleasantly surprised. This was the best film that I have seen in a few years. Not pretentious at all, but a well-made sweet film with some very human themes. The acting was just great and really believable. Cantona adds a nice touch - especially for those United fans who remember that Kung-fu kick and the sardines... What I liked most was how the script was so realistic and yet incorporated so many funny lines; I was cracking up with laughter and then almost had tears in my eyes... Really nice one!This won't appeal to everyone though - a couple of the reviewers tried to compare this to Notting Hill - please!!!

This is a lovely, funny and thought-provoking film which draws together the best elements of Nora Ephron's romantic comedies and Richard Curtis's London movies, with great nods to classic Woody Allen. It's a comedy about uncovering the truth in long-term relationships and finding out what you really want in life; one of my friends who watched it with me began to examine the parallels to his own long-term relationship. It's a film that runs deep. The story is about a magazine editor and a writer (Hugh Bonneville) from London who see a couple counselor as their long-term relationship begins to collapse. Their best friends' relationship is also in crisis. The solutions to all their problems appear within the 'films within the film' of a super smooth French expert on love, movie director Thierry Grimandi (a pitch perfect performance by former soccer player Eric Cantona), on whom the writer is writing a feature. The film is clever, funny and emotionally truthful and the parodies of the French director's films are spot on.

Eric is great. Eric is just playing Eric. The rest is truly bad. What happened to the British film making fraternity that it assumes that everyone is interested in the middle class creative's life? No.. only they are.. that is why this wasn't a hit because nobody else cares. The interminable snowball of emotional layer cake that formulates these films stifles any real achievements with dialogue or characterisation and swallows it up with the cheesy endings. This stuff belongs on ITV on a Sunday night and nowhere else.What is a shame about this film is that it could have been interesting, it could have had an idea but it leaves it behind and tries to become Notting Four Weddings and a Hill. Please go away.. watch Hunger... and come back and try again. But please.. until you can get rid of the 'rom-com' fixation.. do not.. I repeat.. do not.. see me!

I find British film exports generally very good to superb, but this one is an exception. It's billed (even on IMDb) as a comedy/romance, and someone should sue for false advertising. With the exception of the first five minutes, there is barely a desperately needed laugh in the entire movie. The rest of the 88 minutes is basically people yakking endlessly about love and romance, to the point where it is waist-deep in a slow-moving (at times static) 'narrative'. Generous critics of this movie might want to call it a satire of the differences between British and French versions of love. And indeed it could have worked if the direction allowed it to 'breathe' as a satire. But it doesn't. Attempts at satire are sabotaged by the ponderous weight of the dialogue. Hugh Bonneville plays Jed, who wants to marry his girlfriend of 10 years (Cheryl, played by Victoria Hamilton). But they discover they don't really love each other at all, thanks to the probing of a French psychiatrist and a French filmmaker who specializes in affaires d'amour. Meanwhile, Jed's best friend Marcus (Douglas Henshall) madly loves his girlfriend Sophie (Anne-Marie Duff), or so he says, before a chance encounter with his first love of 20 years before. Marcus wants to run off to (where else?) Paris to marry her, leaving Sophie behind, loveless and forlorn. But wait: Jed is also loveless and forlorn. Gosh, do you think maybe they'll get together? This wildly telegraphed ending comes about the 55-minute mark. The rest of the film is mere padding for the clichéd finale. This movie cries out for some light touches here and there to air out its stuffiness. It is dirge-deep in talk of love and romance. Director Jackie Oudney has apparently never heard of the eloquence of silence in film.