FRENCH LOVER is a romantic comedy that boasts French superstar Omar Sy in the title role.Omar Sy rose to fame with his hit UNTOUCHABLES, which also highlighted his talent for comedy, once again displayed in FRENCH LOVER.
In FRENCH LOVER, Sy plays the model/actor that launches the fragrance FRENCH LOVER, as the blurb goes, “Je t’aime FRENCH LOVER.The beginning sequence in which Abel Camara (Sy) portrays the actor in the advertising filming sequence is hilarious enough.But Abel does not have a girlfriend, and he is in trouble as an actor because of his drug use and booze, resulting in the bad press, though there is hardly any of this shown in the film.Except that he smokes a bit.
As far as romantic comedies go, there are few surprises in the Harlequin-type romance.There is the odd first meeting of the couple, in this case, at a bar, in which a misunderstanding occurs when Marion (Sara Giraudeau) splashes a drink by accident on Abel’s shirt.There are obstacles to the couple’s romance, which in this case is Abel’s star presence.It does not take a genius to figure out that the couple will get together again.There is also the customary best friend of the male (Alban Ivanov in a wasted and underwritten role), who, in this case, is his childhood buddy.The best thing about the film is, as expected, Omar Sy, who spreads his charm in most scenes, and he is a funny actor, especially when doing his dance moves.Even then, Sy is unable to save director Rives’ (MESRINE Parts 1 and 2, TAXI 4) romantic comedy.
FRENCH LOVER opens for streaming on Netflix Friday, September 26th.
AMOUR APOCALYPSE (Peak Everything) (Canada 2025) ** Directed by Anne Emond
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Director Anne Emond tackles male trauma with her forty-year-old protagonist suffering from insecurity and a need for acceptance. Despite his regimen of exercise and antidepressants, Adam (Hivon), proprietor of a Quebec kennel, cannot help but despair over the ever-escalating climate catastrophe. One night, while feeling especially hopeless, he calls the tech support line for his newly acquired therapeutic desk lamp, believing it to be a crisis help line. He gets lucky: on the other end is Tina (Perabo), who's relieved to talk about something more meaningful than assembly instructions.This is a romantic comedy tackled with nuances and from a different angle.But Director Emond’s pace is too slow to match the premise.The pair connect over their shared existential worries and, when an earthquake rocks Tina's Ontario town, Adam takes the opportunity to drive there and help this woman he's never seen. Environmental dread brought these two together on the phone, so it's only fitting that a natural disaster prompts them to meet.This sets the couple off on a path of romance and adventure.
The film is a strange love story of sorts. Director Emond gets her character, Adam, to cry, mope, and come to terms with himself. Her female characters, those that Adam encounters, like Tina and his kennel helper, have stronger personalities. It is hard to identify with a protagonist with self-worth issues, but the film feels too like one with too much of a female slant.
AMOUR APOCALYPSE (Peak Everything) premiered at Cannes this year, followed by a screening at the Toronto International Film Festival.It opens this week in theatres.
SUSPENDED TIME (HORS DU TEMPS) (France 2024) **1/2 Directed by Olivier Assayas
The film SUSPENDED TIME is so called as it is as if time stood still during the lockdown of the COVID-19 Pandemic.The film is set during the April 2020 lockdown.It follows two brothers, Paul (a film director) and Etienne (a music journalist), who are confined together in their childhood home in the French countryside. They’re joined by their respective romantic partners, Morgane and Carole. The old house is large, its rooms, objects, and the surrounding landscape trigger memories and reflections: of parents, neighbours, absences, childhood, past relations, much of which is revealed through the film’s voiceover.
As society recedes in the spring of 2020, film director Paul Berger (Vincent Macaigne) returns to his childhood home in the provincial Chevreuse Valley. Still processing the legacy of his parents and feeling out the uncertain shape of the world to come, Paul hunkers down with his documentary filmmaker girlfriend Carole (Nora Hamzawi), his music journalist brother Etienne (Micha Lescot), and Etienne’s new girlfriend Morgan (Nine d’Urso). Squabbling over the minutiae of health protocols and the morality of a hermetic lifestyle mediated by ubiquitous online shopping, the makeshift household finds new ways to lacerate familiar wounds.
Yet Paul also finds a surprising refuge in the compulsory quietude of pandemic life, an opportunity to reconnect with the books and art and enchanted forests of his youth. A scabrous French comedy from master filmmaker Olivier Assayas, Suspended Time is a sharply personal and fiercely neurotic ode to the eternal expanse of memory and the allure of life beyond our personal screens.
Though SUSPENDED TIME attempts to project what it would be like to isolate during the Pandemic, what transpires on screen is not what the general public would go through.In the film, the two brothers and their respective partners stay in a beautiful countryside house and experience the beauty of the outside.They undoubtedly isolate, but the isolation feels more like a secluded holiday than any imprisonment due to COVID-19.Another point is that the filmmaker and the journalist talk a lot about art and their experiences, which are way above those of many of the audience.In the evening scene, when they play a tune to be identified or the film the tune was taken from, much of what is played cannot be recognized by the average moviegoer.
The two brothers, Paul and Etienne, get on each other’s nerves, which results in one shouting match.Paul is more annoying, and watching these two on film can require a bit of patience.
Yet Assayas’s film is not without charm.Though nothing much happens, and the nuances of the characters begin to bother each other, for example, the volume of the music or what they want to do, like read or watch a movie, there are cute observations where one can laugh at the follies of humans.
The film contains lots of voiceover that gives the audience more perspective of what is going on and how the characters react and feel.The tactic was used very much in Francois Truffaut’s DEUX ANGLAISES ET LE CONTINENT and this film feels like Truffaut’s classic.
SUSPENDED TIME opened only in the United States recently and will premiere in Canada, being available on Digital September 30th.
LES FEMMES AU BALCON (The Balconettes)(France 2024) ** Directed by Noémie Merlant
This horror comedy is the writing and directorial debut of the actress Noémie Merlant, who starred in the hot French film PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE
The word balconette in English could mean either a little balcony or a type of bra with light to medium support to enhance cleavage. But the BALCONETTE in the English title of the French film refers to the women on the balcony, as is the direct translation of the French title LES FEMMES AU BALCONThe three ladies are Elise, Ruby and Nicole.
Noémie Merlant plays Elise, dressed like Marilyn Monroe, and the other two ladies on the balcony are an online sex worker Ruby Souheilia Yacoub), and an aspiring novelist Nicole (Sanda Codreanu).Things get out of hand when they invite themselves to a neighbouring hunk’s room.The ladies get to dance, drink and do really stupid things, which in film terms means they get unguent in the director’s fantasies.
A current heat wave in France sees extremely high temperatures around France, including Marseilles, where the story is set.
LES BALCONETTES begins with a slow, wide and long pan of the balconies in a Marseilles neighbourhood.Just as one might think, things might go too slow, a black woman takes a steel pan to the head of her husband, causing him to bleed badly and crawl to the balcony where she eventually sits on him, suffocating him.As a fellow neighbour eyes a nude man on his balcony and begins masturbating, she is rudely interrupted by the black woman who had just murdered her husband.LES BALCONETTES is describes as a horror comedy, and one wonders if he film can match its eye opening beginning.
Apparently not.
The film title refers to the three female roommates who live in a building with a balcony, which they frequent.They often stare out at other balconies or apartments.They see one male hunk who they nickname Paul, a Gucci kind of hunk.Paul has long hair, walks around semi-nude, smokes cigarettes, and drives the three females sex-crazy.
So what do females do when they have nothing to do?Drink, talk about men, masturbate, and talk dirty.The three girls do just that, resulting in a comedy that is not only unfunny but boring and quite distasteful.Whatever happened to the black woman at the beginning of the film who had just murdered her husband?Obviously, this rather interesting part of the story is totally omitted during the rest of the movie.
Unfortunately, all the lady antics are not only self-indulgent but boring and very slanted towards a female audience.A few attempts of being politically correct are largely left to go nowhere.The story picks up a little in the second half, but interest in these three characters is lost already.
LES FEMMES AU BALCON (The Balconettes) premiered at Cannes in 2024 and opens at the TIFF Lightbox for a limited run.
FRENCH LOVER (France 2025) **½
Directed by Nina Rives
FRENCH LOVER is a romantic comedy that boasts French superstar Omar Sy in the title role. Omar Sy rose to fame with his hit...
