Showing @ Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Thu 10 Nov @ 8:30pm

Jean-Pierre Améris / France/Belgium / 2010 / 80 mins

The French Film Festival gets underway in style with Jean-Pierre Améris’ exquisitely subversive rom-com, ingeniously reflecting the intense timidity at the root of our sexual relationships. Jean-René (Benoît Poelvoorde), a small-time chocolatier who suffers from overwhelming social anxiety, employs the cutesy young Angélique (Isabelle Carré), a similarly gifted chocolate-maker who bears comparable sexual fears and repressions; suffice to say it’s a recipe for success.

Améris maintains an examination of sexual relationships found in his previous films from Lightweight to Call Me Elisabeth. He steps away from the harshness of their storylines however to create this fairly light get-the-girl comedy, dusted with orchestrated moments of farce, slapstick and absurdism. Jean-René and Angélique’s tensions are an exaggeration of our own interpersonal imperfections – Améris admits himself that this is his most autobiographical film to date. Yet he uses these “inadequate” aspects of our behaviour to almost suggest the result of an equation: two negatives produce a positive. What he creates is a captivatingly rich language bubbling beneath the surface of his film, alluding to a much more intricate idea on the nature of social expectation and conformity battling against sexual politics. It’s a film which manages to warm the emotions of its audience while delicately toying with the romance film genre.