New on DVD Nov 16 2008 @ 08:00 am
REVIEW: Priceless
Directed By: Pierre Salvadori
Written By: Benoît Graffin, Pierre Salvadori
Starring: Audrey Tatou, Gad Elmaleh, Marie-Christine Adam, Vernon Dobtcheff
Running Time: 104 minutes
Rated PG-13 for sexual content including nudity
This review was originally published June 20, 2008.
I have a love-hate relationship with romantic comedies that resembles more of a hate-hate relationship most of the time. As genres go, it isn’t sitting at the bottom of my barrel (musical bio-pic, I’m looking at you), but it’s close. Tack on the word ‘French’ to the beginning and things become even more problematic. From the heights of absolute adoration (Amelie) to the depths pure hatred (Love Me If You Dare, perhaps one of the worst films I have ever seen), the French take on the romantic comedy consistently elicits extreme reactions from me. They are experimental with their rom-coms as often as we are generic with ours, but the results are not always palatable, or even coherent for that matter. So it was with trepidation that I popped my screener of Priceless into the DVD player, hoping for the best but bracing myself to be emotionally assaulted with the worst. Surprisingly, the latest Audrey Tatou (Amelie, The Da Vinci Code) vehicle doesn’t register at either extreme, but sits comfortably somewhere in the middle.
Mr. Bean meets Audrey Hepburn.
Our starlet, the French reincarnation of Audrey Hepburn, is in full-on Breakfast at Tiffany’s mode here, channeling Holly Golightly with voodoo-like precision. She plays Irène, a petulant gold-digger who, when bored with her geriatric fiancé and out for a quick midnight tryst, mistakes Jean, an oblivious bartender (Gad Elmaleh), for a man of means. Her superficial engagement blows up in her face and she’s stuck with what amounts to a penniless (albeit slightly more attractive) version of Mr. Bean. He’s too smitten to tell her how empty his pockets really are, but that ruse lasts as long as hers did, and soon she’s dumped him in lieu of more expensive fish, which she plans to fry all the way to another posh engagement. Jean stumbles into his own parasitic gold-digging affair with a rich widow, and before long the two are jockeying for position amidst posh boutiques and black-tie cocktail parties, all the while falling in love with one another.
Gad Elmaleh as Jean, dog walker extraordinaire.
Perhaps the greatest shock in Priceless is that the eternally charming Tatou is out-charmed in every scene by Elmaleh, who owns this film like Peter Sellers owned The Pink Panther. She might be the marketing hook (notice how many other actors share the poster with her), but he’s the reason to show up. From bumbling dog walker to naively blushing virgin to suave seducer, Elmaleh turns in a magnificent performance, effortlessly convincing us of Jean’s ugly duckling transformation. And not only is his acting a joy to watch, he’s also howlingly funny. One particular sequence, in which he prank calls Irène’s elderly benefactor, offering him pre-masticated food as part of the hotel’s “senior package,” had me in tears.
Tatou isn’t nearly his match, although this is partly by design. Her character is nasty, vindictive, and relentlessly shallow, standing little chance of winning the audience’s sympathy against his wounded puppy dog. Design is only partly to blame however, for while Elmaleh convinces us that Jean loves Irène, Tatou fails to convince us that Irène warrants it. Chemistry certainly exists between the two leads, but the film suffers because, quite frankly, she doesn’t deserve him.
Another French film I referenced at the beginning, Love Me If You Dare, bears mentioning again. In it the two would-be lovers one-up each other with increasingly obscene dares until the whole picture spirals out of control into a ludicrous, sadomasochistic, chaotic mess that lacks any kind of moral compass. I don’t mean that it’s amoral (many films aspire to anti-morality with great success), but that it has no clear interpretation of right and wrong and shifts the definitions around like a color blind chameleon. The effect is disorienting and, in the employ of a film this aggressively cruel, borderline abusive.
Audrey Tatou as Irene with accompanying creepy old guy.
Priceless, while never reaching the nether regions inhabited by Love Me If You Dare, does share some of its morally-challenged sensibilities. Take one instance, where Jean is waiting for Irène to rendezvous with him for a late night fiesta at the beach. Irène feigns exhaustion with her wrinkled patron, but the old codger just won’t go to sleep, forcing her to…um…wear him out a bit. The scene is played for laughs, but this laissez-faire attitude towards sexual intimacy damages the film’s climax, when one character breathlessly rushes to stop another one from consummating an equally shallow relationship. It’s impossible to actually care at that moment because the film has already given us a loosey-goosey attitude towards sex, stripping away any emotional resonance the climax might have had. Or, to put it another way, since both Irène and Jean are already whoring themselves out, what difference is a little more whoring going to make anyways?
For all my complaints, Priceless is thoroughly enjoyable, and Elmaleh’s performance is the stuff of grand entertainment. The French have some whacked out notions of love and intimacy, and while they may potentially offend, their films are, at the very least, more interesting than the stupefying dreck routinely shoved into American multiplexes. Priceless is, pun intended, worth the price of admission.
on Jun 20 2008 @ 11:06 pm 1. Alexander Coleman said …
Excellent review, Evan. This film really is a little French gem.
The chemistry between the leads is particularly special, and sadly these days, all too unique, I think.
on Jun 21 2008 @ 7:29 am 2. Luke Harrington said …
…how could a film that’s like Breakfast at Tiffany’s AND Mr. Bean be anything less than fantastic beyond belief???
I just don’t understand…:)
on Jun 21 2008 @ 8:25 am 3. Evan Derrick said …
Don’t quote me too heavily on the Mr. Bean reference. Elmaleh, especially near the beginning, has the same bumbling obliviousness of Mr. Bean, but the comparison stops there, really. Actually, a more accurate description would be Adrien Brody meets Tom Hanks meets Mr. Bean, for what that’s worth.
on Jun 21 2008 @ 10:09 am 4. colleen said …
Emilie is my second favorite film of all time, so I have been waiting for this film since I first saw the trailer. Glad to hear its not going to be a complete letdown.
on Jun 21 2008 @ 3:04 pm 5. Daniel said …
Having seen this a couple of months ago, I’m starting to realize it’s still hanging around my top 10 of the year so far, and it’s not looking likely to move. It didn’t make me feel great about humanity, but something about it was just too charming. The title sequence, the music, the scenery, Elmaleh. I’m about this close from saying I loved it.
on Jun 23 2008 @ 11:29 pm 6. Rick Olson said …
Ah yes … the French. Perhaps their notions of intimacy aren’t so much whacked out as merely French. Seriously, though, the notion of some woman wearing the old codger out is so much a male-fantasy kind of thing. And, lo and behold, it was written by a couple of men. Fancy that.
on Jun 24 2008 @ 8:44 am 7. Evan Derrick said …
Good points, Rick. Wish I had thought of those myself to put in the review.
on Jun 25 2008 @ 2:19 am 8. Camille Vignaux said …
Hello Evan,
I’m thrilled to see that French movies do find their audience in the U.S. The French film industry is very productive, but only few films make it to America. Sorry to hear that “Jeux d’enfants” (Love me if you dare) was amongst them (which I agree was awful). If you liked Audrey Tautou as Irène (ah yes, those “accents” are really tricky) I can recommend the film “Venus Beauté (Institut)” in which she plays the total opposite, a very innocent young girl seduced by an older man.
Looking forward to reading more of your reviews!
on Jun 25 2008 @ 8:18 am 9. Evan Derrick said …
Ah Camillie, it seems as if I have been found out by an actual French lady! My apologies on the accents…it’s a personal pet peeve of mine not to mess things like that up, so thanks for pointing it out.
On Jeux d’enfants, I was under the impression that it was a runaway hit in France, breaking box office records and everything. You, apparently, did not enjoy it yourself, but I’m curious as to why it was so successful. It’s a question that has been nagging me since I saw the film. Any insider’s thoughts on it?
And thanks so much for dropping by and not ripping me a new one for picking on your country a bit.
Hope to see your comments around here more often in the future.
on Jun 26 2008 @ 9:54 am 10. Camille Vignaux said …
O.K., I checked out the box office for “Jeux d’enfants” and it had 1.098.398 spectators. Not sure whether that qualifies as a “runaway hit”, but it was quite successful. I’m dazzled as to why so many people went to see it. The major movie magazines such as Télérama and Les Inrockuptibles gave it bad reviews. I guess the cast with Guillaume Canet and Marion Cotillard was one reason – both actors are very popular in France. What else? After reading some of the spectators’ reviews it seems that many people thought it was “very romantic”. I don’t share this opinion – but then I’m only a quarter French.
This year, a film called “Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis” broke all the box office records in France with over 20 million spectators. I’d love to hear your opinion on that one (might nag you even more)…
Read you soon!
on Jun 26 2008 @ 10:18 am 11. Evan Derrick said …
Yes, I don’t see how anyone could find that romantic. I thought it was cute for the first 30 minutes, until he had her out on the train track, blindfolded. It got darker and darker and darker, and my mouth was completely agape, utterly disbelieving that anyone could find this entertaining. Glad we agree on that one.
Ok Camille, I will have to check “Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis” out, although I’m not sure how to track down a copy. I’ll see what I can do!
on Jun 26 2008 @ 11:04 am 12. Kristena said …
So even the French critics disliked Jeux d’enfants? That is good to know since I thought it somehow represented French tastes. If French people are anything like Americans, they were probably intrigued by the marketing campaign. I thought it was going to be a cute movie and was sorely mistaken.
on Nov 16 2008 @ 10:55 am 13. Nick Plowman said …
Still hope to see this soon, based solely on a few good reviews and that gorgeous still with Tatou up there, simply stunning.
on Nov 20 2008 @ 10:34 pm 14. K. Bowen said …
This film looks better and better in retrospect.