L’Arnacoeur (2010) - film review

Is your daughter going out with the wrong kind of guy?  Is your sister the victim of an amour fou, trapped in a torrid relationship that can only end badly?  If so, then Alex is your man.  He is a professional couple breaker.  By using his unrivalled powers of seduction he is guaranteed to unhook any woman from any good-for-nothing louse.  But he has his principles.  Alex will never interfere with a couple where the female side of the equation is perfectly happy.  Why then should he accept a commission to break up a couple of blissfully contented thirty-somethings who are to be married in a week’s time...?

The penchant of French film directors for American films of the forties is not always a good thing, as this rip-off of the Bette Davis-James Cagney vehicle The Bride Came C.O.D. demonstrates.   Fans of Davis and Cagney will recall that the plot of that film had Davis’ father hire Cagney, a pilot with cash-flow problems, to kidnap Davis in order to prevent her marrying Jack Carson.   Naturally their mutual antipathy turned to love by the last reel.  L’Arnacoeur offers a minor twist: Romain Duris breaks up romances for a living rather than a one-off.  Apart from that it is the same plot, with Vanessa Paradis’ old man hiring him to bust up her wedding. 

This is basically a slick rom-com in search of two charismatic leads.  Almost any French actress in her age group - Virginie Ledoyen, Cécile de France, Isabelle Carré, Audrey Tautou, etc., could phone in a better performance than Paradis.  Meanwhile, Duris does the arrogant, surly macho poseur as well as Benoît Magimel, Gaspard Ulliel, etc., but someone like Thierry Lhermitte is what is needed.  Apparently it was a hit, so what do I know...?

© Leon Nock (London, England) 2010 

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