THE GIRL FROM MONACO
I'm not sure exactly what the moral of this The Girl From Monaco is -- but there did seem to be something along the lines of "if it's too good to be true, it's too good to be true."
At the center of this story is Bertrand (Fabrice Luchini) the not at all sexy, middle-aged and brilliant criminal defense attorney who is in Monaco to defend Edith Lassalle (Stephane Audrane) from a crime of passion murder charge. Edith's son Louis (Gilles Cohen) has provided Betrand with a body guard, a very serious fellow by the name of Christophe (Roschdy Zem), who, by the way, happens to look a bit like President Obama. There are many lightly comic moments that testify to Christophe's commitment: like his refusal to sit down and eat with Bertrand because he has a sandwich in his room that he'll eat only after Bertrand is asleep.
Needless to say these two begin to warm up to each other especially when a very flaky and lovely TV weather girl named Audrey (Louise Bourgoin) enters the story. She immediately takes a mercenary interest in Bertrand and has absolutely no reservations about throwing her body at him. It's all predictable: Bertrand is hopelessly smitten even as his rational lawyer mind know it all to be nonsense. As the murder trial progresses Bertrand becomes more and more distracted and it is then up to the bodyguard to run interference.
It is wonderful that there seem to be so many French women filmmakers with fresh perspectives on male/female relationships. In the recent film, La Cliente (A French Gigolo), for example, Josiane Balasko examines the romantic dilemmas of the single career woman over 50, without resorting to the insulting stereotype of the desperately pathetic "cougar" stereotype, that Hollywood seems so fond of. Here, Anne Fontaine takes the cliched view goldigging younger woman, wealthy older man out for a spin.
In many film traditions, including the French, the mis-casting of older actors opposite counterparts 10-20 years younger often isn't even commented upon in the text, or even if it is, we're meant to sympathize with the old fool (see Whatever it Takes). Fontaine is making a comment right away by casting the pudgy and slightly neurotic Bertrand against the leggy, blond Audrey, who is a steamrolling chatterbox. Yet it is not exactly clear who we're supposed to be rooting for: the privileged man or the calculating young girl trying to assert control of the situation. Fontaine, in fact, puts us in the seat of Christophe the bodyguard and the true outsider who coolly assesses the situation.
For all of these reasons, The Girl From Monaco, like so many films in the French tradition, operates deep beneath it's sunny surface. On the outside it's a nice, tight little mystery/thriller, with red herrings and a nice big fat twist at the end. Peel away the layers and you are left thinking about class, race and gender politics, social mobility and the sometimes poisonous influence of our overly materialist mass culture.
The Girl From Monaco opens on July 3, 2009.
Directed by Anne Fontaine; written by Anne Fontaine and Benoit Graffin; produced by Bruno Pesery and Philippe Carcassonne; cinematography by Patrick Blossier; edited by Maryline Monthierux; music by Philippe Rombi.
With: Fabrice Luchini (Bertrand); Roschdy Zem (Christophe); Louise Bourgoin (Audrey); Stephane Audran (Edith Lassalle); Jeanne Balibar (Hélène); and Gilles Cohen (Louis Lassalle).
