Le Prix à payer (2007) - film review

To the outside world, Jean-Pierre Ménard has everything a man could want to be happy.  He has a well-paid job, a beautiful wife, a daughter, a chauffeur-driven car...  But there is one thing he doesn’t have – someone to share his bed.  When he raises the matter with his chauffeur the response he gets is: Cut off her assets!  Taking this literally, Jean-Pierre gives his wife an ultimatum: no conjugals, no money.  Big mistake...

For her second full-length film, director Alexandra Leclère takes a darkly cynical, almost misogynistic, look at the male-female relationship and prompts us to contemplate whether the woman’s role is inevitably that of the paid prostitute, especially when the man is the breadwinner.  Le Prix à payer is far more subtle and intelligent than its trailer and some critics would have us believe, and, whilst it is far from perfect, it provides an amusing meditation on what men and women expect from their conjugal relationship.  Far too many films of late have tackled the subject lightly, even flippantly.  It makes a change to see a film where the issue of ownership in a relationship is explored truthfully, rather than to have to sit through the usual morass of clichés and Mills & Boon style dross.    

As in her previous film, Les Soeurs fâchées (2004), Alexandra Leclère has the benefit of a first rate cast, which she employs with great skill to deliver a film that is both witty and true to life (albeit somewhat caricatured in a few scenes).  Christian Clavier and Gérard Lanvin form an amusing buddy double act – incredible to think that the last time they appeared together was in the 1989 film Mes meilleurs copains.  Nathalie Baye just seems to get better and better as the years pass and is at the height of her powers here, with one look that could kill at a hundred paces and another that could make any man her willing slave for eternity (or until she got bored with him).  Add supports of the calibre of Géraldine Pailhas and Patrick Chesnais to the mix and the film’s obvious shortcomings - its uneven pace and a few misfired attempts at humour – are easily forgiven.  Le Prix à payer is provocative fun that offers a sobering reflection on how men and women treat one another in a relationship in our "money talks" era.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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