Les Infortunes de la beauté (1999) - film review

Daphné is in love with Vincent but, despite her bountiful good looks, she isn’t at all confident he will succumb to her powers of seduction.   She devises a scheme to ensure that Vincent will give up his Don Juan tendencies and devote himself to her.  With her friend, Céline, she wanders around Paris looking for young women who are prepared to pose nude for an artist, and thereby trap Vincent into seeing what Daphné has to offer.

The inconsequential nature of this film and its wishy-washy plot makes it inordinately difficult to take seriously, although it is oddly entertaining in places.   Some laughably pretentious dialogue and needlessly arty camera work undermine the film’s better points, which include a number of genuinely funny comic situations.  The film’s star, the ever lovely Arielle Dombasle, is captivating, but, hampered by a lacklustre script, she shines far less brightly than in the films of Eric Rohmer, to which this film is, in some ways, a very pale approximation.

© James Travers 2004

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