L'Ex-femme de ma vie (2004)
Josiane Balasko
  Comedy / Drama  


Synopsis
One evening, writer Tom Steiner is dating his fiancée Ariane when who should appear but his ex-wife Nina.  Homeless, penniless and pregnant, Nina appeals to Tom for help.  Failing to get money from a cash-point, he takes her back to his apartment.  Fate has brought Tom and Nina back together after seven years of separation, and fate, it would appear, seems determined to keep them together...






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Film Review
It’s hard to imagine that the director of the classic French comedy Gazon maudit could be responsible for this limping excursion into wastelands of mediocrity.   Josiane Balasko is someone who is greatly respected in France for her work as director, screenwriter and actress, but here she touches her creative nadir.  L’Ex-femme de ma vie is a film with absolutely no redeeming features.

It’s not hard to account for the film’s failure.  Killer number one is the script, which combines the most excruciatingly contrived plot with the most implausible, two-dimensional set of unsympathetic characters, none of who seems capable of speaking or acting in a way that an inhabitant of the planet Earth would recognise as normal, even in a cheap farce.

Then, as if that wasn’t enough punishment for an unsuspecting cinema audience, we have Thierry Lhermitte and Karin Viard going head-to-head for the highly coveted Worst Actor of the Year award, with Josiane Balasko struggling to enter the fray but failing (just).  These are the kind of Grade D performances you’d expect to see in some trashy low budget Australian soap opera, not in a fairly high-profile French film.  No matter how much one admires Josiane Balasko, you can’t help but think that this film was a terrible mistake...

© James Travers 2007

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User Comments
It was quite an enjoyable film and the review is far too harsh. Lhermitte does a good job and has quite a good screen presence. Viard plays her part quite well too, suitably neurotic, but sympathetic at the same time. The film is a bit contrived, but then most are. That’s how engaging stories are created. Most films are fiction, unless the reviewer has forgotten that.  It was worth a watch.
Nick Varley (Yorkshire) 

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