De vrais mensonges (2010) - film review

One bright spring morning, Emilie receives a love letter, a beautiful but anonymous declaration of love which cannot fail to twang the romantic heartstrings of its reader.  Unfortunately, Emilie is too busy running her hair salon for romance and so this little bolt from Cupid has as much impact on her as a shabby mail-shot from a firm of undertakers.  Her first impulse is to crumple the letter up and toss it into the bin.  But then she sees an opportunity to come to the aid of her mother, who has sunk into a solitary depression after her husband left her for a younger and far more attractive woman.  Without a moment’s delay, she copies out the amorous missive and sends it on to her mother.  She also writes a reply to the original letter, hoping to set in motion a torrid love affair.  What she doesn’t know is that the first letter was sent to her by her shy employee Jean, who is head over heels in love with her but dare not tell her as much.  Emilie can have no idea of the series of mishaps and misunderstandings that will result from what she mistakenly believes to be an act of kindness...

At a time when comedy has almost become a dirty word, synonymous with the bargain basement humour that results from a mindless collision of the trite, the vulgar and the absurdly fanciful, it is always a joy when a film comes along which reminds us what comedy should be like.  De vrais mensonges (a.k.a. Beautiful Lies) is one such film, a classic French rom-com that can hardly fail to delight all aficionados of the genre.  Although it adheres pretty rigidly (perhaps a little to mechanically) to a tried and trusted formula  - one that owes as much to Marivaux as it does to Lubitsch - it somehow feels far more fresh and alive than the majority of the so-called comedies that confront us these days.  It’s nice to be reminded that the subtle art of comedy isn’t quite dead, at least not yet.

In what is arguably his most uninhibited and likeable comedy to date, director Pierre Salvadori crafts a breezy morality tale that is replete with deliciously witty one-liners and well-honed comic situations which are performed to perfection by an instantly likeable cast.   As on his previous, well-regarded comedies - notably Cible émouvante (1993), Les Apprentis (1995) and Comme elle respire (1998) - Salvadori takes a real situation, with real characters, and gives it just the slightest comedic twist, so that we never lose sight of the reality, the sadness and confusion, that lies just beneath the comedy surface.  Whereas too much modern comedy resorts to ridiculous caricature and hopelessly exaggerated situations in a desperate attempt to extort laughs from a begrudging audience, this film has one foot firmly in the real world, and this is what makes it so fiendishly funny.  Humour is not fantasy, it’s really just another way of looking at life.  Comedy only works if we can recognise the reality behind the gags.

De vrais mensonges boasts an exceptional cast, and whilst the casting is not exactly daring it does work very well.  The elfin lovely Audrey Tautou still looks as if she is superglued to her Amélie groove (and looks increasingly like Pauline tied to the railway tracks, with no hope of rescue), but the film is well-served (certainly from a marketing point of view) by her near-reprise of the role that brought her fame way back in 2001.  If the film were made in Hollywood, it would doubtless have come out under the title Amélie II.  Whilst Tautou hardly gets a chance to flex her histrionic muscles and show us that she can be more than irresistibly cute, the film does play to her strengths as a comedic actress and is all the better for her engaging presence.  Her fans will not be disappointed. 

The real star of the film is not Tautou, however delightful she may be, but the wonderful Nathalie Baye, who is magnificent in her best comedic role to date.  The fact that Baye is funny here (deliriously so in a few scenes) doesn’t prevent her from being true to life, and watching her reminds us of Chaplin’s wry observation, that comedy is tragedy seen in long-shot.  Sami Bouajila’s equally excellent turn as the victim who gets caught up in the machinery reinforces this impression.  There is a helpless vulnerability to both Baye’s and Bouajila’s portrayals that lends an almost cruel malignancy to Tautou’s well-meaning matchmaking machinations.  We laugh, but the laughs are not entirely guilt-free - there is a dark but subtle edge to the comedy that leaves a slightly bitter aftertaste. 

In comparison with Salvadori’s earlier comedy offerings, De vrais mensonges is more theatrical in its presentation, which is both a plus and a minus.  The stylisation, which is most apparent in the use of red curtains as a theatrical reference, is not particularly subtle and does take away from the reality of the piece.  On the other hand, the occasional shot of unreality doesn’t harm the film and provides an effective reminder of the absurdity of what we think of as normal human behaviour.  After all, as Shakespeare succinctly put it, we are all actors and the world is just one big stage.   Salvadori merely goes one step further and assures us that life is nothing more than a Feydeau farce, in which the problems we get into are largely those of our own making.   De vrais mensonges will probably not win too many awards for originality, but in the entertainment stakes it scores very highly indeed - a deliciously indulgent feel-good romp.

© James Travers 2011

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