L'Amour, c'est mieux à deux (2010)
Directed by Dominique Farrugia, Arnaud Lemort

Film Review

L'Amour, c'est mieux à deux is the kind of good-natured popular French comedy that is all too easily dismissed as lightweight American-style trash.  The situations are predictable, the characters a little too familiar to have a life of their own, and you can see many of the gags coming from a mile off.  Certainly, critical reaction to the film on its first release in France was generally far from positive but this did not prevent it from being a moderate box office hit, attracting an audience of over a million.  American and British reaction to the film ought to be more positive (assuming the distributors are brave enough to risk a release outside France), given that it conforms far closer to the Anglo-Saxon notion of humour than the more restrained, self-conscious Gallic alternative.  The film is certainly lacking in originality, and some of the jokes are a little past their sell-by date, but overall it is an enjoyable romp, laugh-out loud funny in places, pleasingly unsentimental and surprisingly astute in its observations on the difficulty of locating that elusive perfect partner in the jaded, supposedly unromantic era in which we now find ourselves.

Making his directing debut is the actor-screenwriter Arnaud Lemort, who wrote and directed the film in collaboration with Dominique Farrugia.  It has been more than a decade since Farrugia made his last film, the 1999 comedy Trafic d'influence (in the interim he has been busy doing work to promote understanding of multiple sclerosis whilst supporting Nicolas Sarkozy's presidential campaigns).  The ubiquitous comedic actor Franck Dubosc is also credited with having a hand in the script, which might account for some of the film's more wild excesses and its unfortunate excursions into tasteless vulgarity.  Clovis Cornillac is an obvious (perhaps too obvious) casting choice for the lead male role, a likeable Neanderthal-type who alternates between extreme crassness and genial sensitivity, the main flaw with the film being that he is too much of a caricature to be taken seriously.

Despite Cornillac's concerted attempts to hog the camera, the film is taken away from him by the entourage of lesser known stars-in-the-making who surround him.  Most impressive is the charismatic lead actress Virginie Efira, a former Belgian TV presenter who has spunk, charm and glamour in abundance and clearly has a great future ahead of her in Francophone cinema.  As Cornillac's mischievous sidekick, Manu Payet shows promise in his first substantial film role (having made his name on French radio and television), but it is probably the bevy of talented young actresses who keep popping up at odd moments who have greater impact, in particular Annelise Hesme and Laurence Arne.  L'Amour, c'est mieux à deux may not be the most sophisticated French rom-com you will ever see but it is refreshingly honest, irresistibly funny in parts and a reasonably successful attempt at bridging the gulf between French and American comedy.  It won't win an Oscar but it may just put a smile on your face.

Film Synopsis

Michel and Vincent are two men in their mid-to-late thirties who are both strongly attracted towards women but have very different ideas about love and romance.  Vincent is the archetypal alpha male who regards the female sex as mere objects that exist solely for male gratification.  Michel not only respects women, he worships them and behaves like the consummate romantic.  Friends since childhood, these two men could hardly be more different, and yet they both have a love life that is equally fraught.  Michel's diffidence and Vincent's single-mindedness when it comes to dating make them both inadequate as lovers, as they discover when Angèle and Nathalie enter their lives.  These are two women who could not be better suited for them, but Michel and Vincent have yet to discover that their approaches to love making are equally doomed to failure.  It's time they both changed their ways, otherwise they will most probably end their days as solitary bachelors...