Delpy scores again, but less is more

LOLO Rating: 1/2 out of five Director: Julie Delpy Starring: Julie Delpy, Dany Boon, Vincent Lacoste Duration: 99 minutes

Is there anything Julie Delpy can’t do? The 46-year-old Parisienne had her first screen credit at age nine, and by 15 was playing Wise Young Girl in a 1985 crime drama. In 2007, she wrote and directed and produced and starred in and composed for AND sang in AND edited the excellent comedy 2 Days in Paris. She has acted for Kieslowski (Three Colors), Whedon (Age of Ultron) and Linklater (Before something or other).

She can do it all, and she is very horny.

Wait; that last bit is her character in Lolo, which she also co-wrote and directed.

Violette is a fashion executive from Paris, on vacation in the south of France with her best friend Ariane (Karin Viard). Divorced and anxious to feel “magical moments” with someone special, she happens upon Jean-René (Dany Boon).

He is, as the French say, un péquenaud (hayseed.) But in spite of his being a bad dresser, not very cool, owner of big ears (though you know what that means) and an IT geek, they hit it off.

In fact, she starts thinking he might even be the one. Or, given her checkered history with men, the latest one.

The problem, we soon find out, is Violette’s 19-year-old son, Eloi. Perhaps to keep from confusing him with the far-future humans of The Time Machine, he also goes by the nickname Lolo. He has a best friend, played by Franco-Josh-Gad Antoine Lounguine. He also has a violent dislike of Jean-René.

Just how violent is for the movie to know and you to find out.

For a while Lolo consoles himself with snide comments about J.R.’s provincial background and Dumbo-esque ears. But soon he decides to up the ante. Jean-René, a man to whom a nubbin of steel constitutes “a view of the Eiffel Tower” from his apartment, remains blithely oblivious.

Delpy, as writer/director, has a lot to say in the film, which might actually be the movie’s biggest handicap. She fearlessly (some might even say shamelessly; not me, but some) lampoons the sexual appetites of women of a certain age. She has fun with notions of motherhood, romance and the prejudice of city dwellers against country bumpkins.

She even manages to mock the very genre in which the film takes place; at one point a friend describes her as “Superwoman at work and goofball in real life,” which is basically the elevator pitch for every film starring Katherine Heigl.

But the scattershot humour leads to an inconsistent tone, and a bit of confusion for the audience.

Do we laugh out loud when Lolo spikes Jean-René’s drink, causing the man to embarrass himself like a drunken Mr. Bean? Or should we feel sympathy and alarm?

Take your pick and see where it takes you.

Lolo is a thoughtful romanticcomedy, but it might have erred on the side of thinking a little too much. Sometimes a penis joke is just a penis joke.

Also, this is Delpy’s sixth feature as a director; no need to cram everything into one story at this point.