SHORT TAKE
MR STEIN GOES ONLINE directed by Stéphane Robelin
Alanguorous and broad French comedy, Mr Stein Goes Online attempts to update the romance-by-mistaken-identity conceit of Cyrano de Bergerac but ends up resembling a creepier version of the infamous documentary Catfish.
Pierre (famed French comic Pierre Richard) is ailing, agoraphobic and mourning his late wife. His daughter (Stéphanie Crayencour) attempts to cheer him up with a new computer and ropes in her own daughter’s new boyfriend Alex (Yannis Lespert) to help him – without telling Pierre about the relationship.
Morose and without company, Pierre begins talking to much younger women on dating websites, snaring Flora (Fanny Valette) with charming poetic flourishes. One trick: it’s all done under Alex’s name. The fiction deepens further when Alex actually meets Flora (with Pierre hovering vicariously in the background), and they hit it off – for real.
You earnestly hope these entanglements and facades will be blown open by the close. But everyone seems blind to their own deceptions, most of all the film itself, which gives a free pass to these men for cruelly toying with what turns out to be a bereaved woman. Passing off Pierre’s manipulations as superannuitant loneliness just won’t do. The comedy – or what little there is – suffers terminally as a result.
IN CINEMAS NOW