Montreal Gazette

WOODY ALLEN-ESQUE ROMANTIC CHARM AND FOOD FOR THOUGHT

- BRENDAN KELLY MONTREAL GAZETTE bkelly@montrealga­zette.com twitter.com/ brendansho­wbiz

Emmanuel Mouret had me at hello.

The French actor-writerdire­ctor’s latest film opens with a scene featuring Clément (Mouret) sitting in the park with his young son and he’s trying to convince the kid to stop reading and go play. But the boy is too wrapped up in his novel to be bothered with something as silly as playing in the park.

From the get-go, Mouret sets the tone — a light oh-so-original comedy that’s impossibly charming.

The charm metre goes into overdrive just a short while later when It Girl French actress Anaïs Demoustier shows up on screen. Demoustier seems to be in every Gallic film these days. In this one, she plays Caprice, a bubbly young woman who happens to be sitting beside Clément at the theatre one day. She tells this rather nebbish fellow that it’s an odd coincidenc­e that they’ve been seated together at the theatre on several occasions — and that’s only the beginning of her downright ferocious campaign to make some kind of connection with Clément.

Thus begins this highly entertaini­ng romantic comedy that reinforces the oft-repeated notion that Mouret is France’s Woody Allen. In other words, he makes smart comedies about the vagaries of love, sex and relationsh­ips that raise intriguing questions without being too heavy about any of it.

And Caprice is one of Mouret’s best. It zips by with the same kind of infectious bounce as the jazzy score. And though it’s fun, Mouret actually does manage to toss in some food for thought. Are you destined to end up with your soulmate? Or is it possible that you end up with the wrong partner because you misinterpr­et the signs?

Since it’s a French film, it’s partly about infidelity. Mouret has said the story here is a bit of a fantasy and it sure is. Clément, who hardly appears to be a Casanova-like figure, has two beautiful women fall hard for him. He is a big fan of the theatre actress Alicia (Virginie Efira) — she was in the play he was watching with Caprice — and they begin going out and are soon happily living together.

But then he bumps into Caprice one night at the bar, along with his best buddy Thomas (Laurent Stocker), and before you can say ménage à trois, he’s in the sack with this forceful young woman. At first when she tries to kisses him, he rebuffs her, saying he has a girlfriend.

“But I still want to kiss you,” she says.

“Well try to think of something else,” he responds, helpfully.

She can’t, so she kisses him and well, things just go south from there.

He feels terrible and wants her out of his life, but she’s not big on throwing in the towel. At one point, as she tries to convince him to keep their affair going, she tells him, in one of Mouret’s great lines — “Don’t be so egotistica­l. Be unfaithful.”

Meanwhile, Alicia is tormented by what she sees as her impact on men. She appears doomed to always have her men cheating on her.

In many ways, this is an old-school romantic comedy, complete with rather fanciful romance and a number of moments of almost-slapstick-like physical gags. Some may find the plot a little unrealisti­c and Demoustier’s character irritating, but I don’t share either of those concerns.

I just enjoyed the ride, helped along by strong performanc­es, particular­ly from Mouret and Demoustier.

 ?? K FILMS AMÉRIQUE. ?? Anaïs Demoustier plays Caprice, a bubbly young woman who happens to be sitting beside Clément (Emmanuel Mouret) at the theatre one day.
K FILMS AMÉRIQUE. Anaïs Demoustier plays Caprice, a bubbly young woman who happens to be sitting beside Clément (Emmanuel Mouret) at the theatre one day.

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