Un baiser s’il vous plaît (2007) - film review

During a business trip to Nantes, Emilie loses her way and asks a stranger, Gabriel, for directions.  Gabriel feels instantly drawn to the attractive young woman and offers her a lift in his van.  Emilie, who is equally taken with this kind, good-looking stranger, cannot refuse.  They meet up again later that day and have a meal together.  When the time comes to go their separate ways, Gabriel decides to offer Emilie a parting kiss, but to his surprise she holds herself back.  Sensing Gabriel’s disappointment, Emilie begins to recount the experiences of two acquaintances of hers.  Nicolas and Judith have been friends for many years.  Both are in a steady relationship, but both are dissatisfied with their respective partners.  When Nicolas becomes aware that he no longer feels for his girlfriend as intensely as he once did, he turns to Judith for help.  Within no time at all, Nicolas and Judith are consumed by a passionate love affair that will greatly impact the lives of six people - all because of a seemingly innocent little kiss...

Emmanuel Mouret’s follow-up to his popular Changement d’adresse (2006) is a similarly amiable romantic comedy, one that injects a healthy shot of originality, not to mention some measure of respectability, into the well-worn rom-com formula.  For all its apparent whimsy and gossamer lightness of touch, Un baiser s’il vous plait offers a surprisingly profound meditation on the complexities of love and desire and is Mouret’s most sophisticated and incisive film to date.  The film employs the device of a story within a story to great effect, framing a humorous romantic adventure (in which Mouret, a very competent and likeable actor, takes centre stage) within a more serious amorous encounter.  The framed story and the one that surrounds it are almost mirror images of one another - the first is playfully witty, with characters that are caricatured almost to the level of a Feydeau farce, the second is more sombre and realist in style, yet both convey the same message, that there is no such thing as an innocent kiss.   
 
As ever, Mouret chooses his actors with great care, ensuring that his intelligent screenplay is complemented by performances of the highest calibre.  Virginie Ledoyen, too often overlooked in recent years, is the perfect foil to Mouret’s inept lover (who somehow manages to look like the discarded love child of Jacques Tati and Mr Bean).   Mouret’s intellectual, deadpan humour presents some obvious challenges but Ledoyen nails her character perfectly, and by downplaying the humour and the sentiment to near-homeopathic proportions she gives her verbally diarrhetic but emotionally constipated co-star the perfect sidekick, the Paulette Goddard to Mouret’s Chaplin.  The mating ritual which the über-gauche Mouret and the quietly smouldering Ledoyen embark on may have a parodic pantomime-like feel to it, yet it still has a ring of truth, and provides an effective contrast with the film’s other romantic entanglement.  The latter is played to devastating effect by another hugely talented duo, Julie Gayet and Michaël Cohen, who definitely deserve a re-match in a sequel.

A great lover of classical music (evidenced by his use of such in his films), Mouret constructs his films as though they were symphonies, each episode being a movement with its own distinctive mood and tempo.  This is probably what makes his films so rich and engaging, whilst allowing him to indulge his mania for generous verbiage without losing his audience’s interest.  Mouret’s work has often been likened to that of Truffaut and Rohmer, but it is not unreasonable to compare him with that other master of the romantic comedy, Ernst Lubitsch.  There is a quality to Mouret’s writing and direction - a sense of the absurd coupled with a probing intelligence and genuine unfussy tenderness - that is distinctly Lubitsch-esque.  Like Lubitsch, Mouret shows us the supreme beauty and tragedy of love through the unlikely medium of farce, exposing life’s cruel ironies not by yanking on our heartstrings like an importunate child, but by making us laugh at the distorted reflection of our own experiences.

© James Travers 2010

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