Vive nous! (2000) - film review

When her husband, Yves, suddenly reveals that he has been having an affair, his wife and business partner Valérie is taken aback.  On impulse, she walks into a judo class and is instantly attracted to the young judo instructor, Bruno.   When Yves discovers that his mistress has no plans to leave her husband, he decides to stay with Valérie, not knowing that she is preoccupied with Bruno.  As Valérie signs up for Judo lessons to be near her fantasy boyfriend, her two friends, Annette and Clara are also looking for love.  Whilst Annette is having little success, Clara manages to hook a wealthy older man, who happens to be France’s finance minister.

Not really knowing where it is heading for the most part, Vive nous! tries an awful lot of variants on the romantic comedy genre without really finding its rhythm and managing to tell a coherent story.  It is almost a film of weakly connected sketches, some of which are actually quite funny, but it is too apparent that there just isn’t enough of a narrative to hold the thing together.

The film’s central story strand – the affair between Valérie and Bruno showing that love can, ultimately, conquer all barriers – ought to have carried the film through, but it fails because the characters are just too implausible and unsympathetic. It is further weakened by an even more unlikely secondary plot involving one of Valérie’s friends and a finance minister (caricatured to the point of farce).

Perhaps if it had tried less hard to impress (one or two fewer star name actors may have helped), and if some of the comic excesses and odd surrealist digressions were removed, Vive nous! might have made the grade as a respectable romantic comedy.

© James Travers 2003

Write a review for this film...

What do you think of this film?