Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Beautiful Lies

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Posted by Stu Jamieson (Member # 4626) on 08-06-2011, 07:34 PM:

Pierre Salvadori's Beautiful Lies is a light and frivolous and, on the whole, well-crafted comedy of sweet, well-intentioned (albeit morally questionable) deceptions.

The plot is a twist on Cyrano de Bergerac with Emilie (Audrey Tautou) using an anonymous love letter she received from her handyman, Jean (Sami Bouajila), to woo her depressed mother, Maddy (Nathalie Baye), into thinking that it is actually she who has the secret admirer. Things progress predictably from this point but the film is not without a considerable measure of charm.

With a cast of well-drawn characters sporting lashings of charisma, humour and sparkle, the film is easy to digest and, for the most part, thoroughly enjoyable. Tautou is superb as usual, striking all the comic beats in perfect time; and beautiful as usual too though she could do with a nice thick steak - she's looking very thin!

Unfortunately the film can't maintain it's stride until the end, tripping on the last couple of hurdles. The moral to the story - that relationships built on lies are doomed to failure - seems strangely lost as the conclusion takes a moral turn that can best be described as "European". Read: there's a moral flexibility displayed in the end which is beyond non-European comprehension. It is at this point that all the films good work is undone and, rather than feeling elated, the audience leaves with a somewhat sour taste in their mouths.

7 out of 10.