Guillaume Canet / France / 2010 / 154 minutes / tbc
GFF @ GFT, Mon 21st, Tues 22nd Feb
Guillaume Canet’s follow-up to his taut, intense, unashamedly mainstream thriller Tell No One is the broad, soppy, unashamedly mainstream dramedy Little White Lies. And it’s an equally enjoyable watch.
Opening with an audacious tracking shot following Ludo (Jean Dujardin) as he meanders around a nightclub in the wee hours and departs only to suffer a bone-crunching collision with a bus on his scooter, the audience is immediately shaken to attention. However, the intensity of this introduction proves misleading. With Ludo gravely injured in hospital, his close chums (all a bundle of neurosis, egotism and assorted other personality disorders) decide whether to stay by his bedside or embark on their scheduled annual holiday together, resolving Ludo would want them to go and enjoy themselves.
What follows is a breezy and frankly hilarious ensemble comedy, with occasional dips back into the darker strands of the narrative. The performances are nothing short of sensational all round, but François Cluzet as uptight, successful restauranteur Max, and Gilles Lellouche’s boorish, philandering actor Éric comfortably walk off with the film. In an early scene where married best mate Vincent (Benoît Magimel) tells Max of his undying love for him, Cluzet runs the full gamete from anger to confusion to amusement and back again whilst barely uttering a word. His riotous portrayal of a man gradually falling-apart is an absolute joy. Lellouche takes a walking, talking stereotype and imbues him with such charm and oafish warmth it’s easy to see why his pals keep him around, and so many women fall over themselves to be with him.
The shifts in tone may be too abrupt for the film to work fully on both levels, some of the drama being lost due to the sheer silliness of what has preceded it, and the moralising too simplistic and obvious, but it’s a pleasure to spend a couple of hours in the company of this dysfunctional mob. Witty, charming and sometimes really quite touching, it’s also manipulative, predictable and bursting with cliché… bloody good fun.