HEARTBREAKER (Pascal Chaumeil 2010)

[Chris Knipp]

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Pascal Chaumeil: Heartbreaker

"l'histoire d'un gars dont le taf est de briser des couples ..."--French blog: story of a guy whose job is breaking up couples


Heartbreaker (2010)
Film Reviews — By Chris Knipp on August 28, 2010 at 9:15 am [From Flick Feast, UK (http://flickfeast.co.uk/reviews/film-reviews/heartbreaker-2010/)]

A well-oiled machine that melds together comedy, love story, and actioner

The French title, a slang word I guess, with the same meaning, is L’Arnacoeur. This charming and smoothly executed if far-fetched farce/action/rom-com about a team of professional marriage-derailers-for-hire has won rave reviews along with top box office in France (Allociné critical rating 3.0 (72). As has already been written in a US review, this is exactly the kind of thing Hollywood loves to copy but never manages to do with the required Gallic lightness and elegance. Actually there’s a slight overload of added slapstick and violence this time; still, the action movies on such well-greased wheels and the actors perform with such dash, the movie never ceases to entertain.

The premise: Duris and his sister (Julie Ferrier) and her husband (François Damiens) run an outfit specializing in breaking up impending weddings by showing the bride that her fiancé isn’t as desirable a match as Duris. Duris, AKA Alex, withdraws with a touching story about how he’s too heartbroken to be the one. Usually a rich father employs the team to perform this scam. Such is the case when Vanessa Paridis is about to marry Jonathan, a wealthy young Englishman (Andrew Lincoln). The job goes against Duris’ basic rule never to break up a match when the couple is genuinely in love with each other — as these two are. Also the deadline to stop the wedding is impossibly short. But the team takes it on nonetheless because of a major debt. Gangsters are threatening to do huge damage to Duris if he doesn’t pay up very quickly.

Two gaps in the writing: it’s not entirely clear why Paridis’ father is so keen on destroying this match; and the team’s elaborate high-tech methods are impossibly clever and complicated. However none of this is meant to be taken seriously. Much of the fun is in the ingenious tricks the team uses to follow Paradis’ movements and give Duris opportunities to seduce her — an outcome which she stubbornly resists till the very last moment. And then when she gives in, of course, he breaks another of his cardinal rules and falls in love with her; but it’s all resolved in a lighthearted fashion.

A fun watch with definite non-French audience potential. I saw it in Paris in April 2010 (where the buzz was very positive) and again in a preview in NYC, when it seemed a little longer than it needed to be (there is a lot of repetition). But Duris’ deftness as a comic actor, his physicality in the dancing bits, Paridis’ charm and elegance, and François Damiens’ sympathetic personality hold up and indeed inspire awe and admiration on repeat viewings.

DIRECTOR: Pascal Chaumeil
CAST: ROMAIN DURIS, VANESSA PARADIS, JULIE FERRIER, FRANÇOIS DAMIENS
RUNNING TIME: 105 MIN
COUNTRY: FRANCE
8/10


Heartbreaker/L'Arnacoeur opened in limited theaters in the US September 10, 2010.

Vanessa Paradis is Johnny Depp's main squeeze. Romain Duris has starred in films of Cédric Klapisch, Tony Gatlif, Christophe Honoré, and Jacques Audiard (the latter's, a dramatic breakthrough for the mostly comedy actor, was The Beat My Heart Skipped).

[oscar jubis]

The greatest achievement of the Hollywood Golden Era is a genre of comedy which works out an answer to the question of what constitutes a marriage worth having. These very American comedies have an Emersonian moral outlook. Reading Stanley Cavell's magisterial act of film criticism: "Pursuits of Happiness", is essential to an understanding of the substance and gravity of these very accessible and enjoyable works of art. They include among them Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, The Awful Truth, His Girl Friday, and the first and most popular of them all, It Happened One Night . The latter is the primary source of inspiration for Heartbreaker. These films characterize "a marriage worth having" as a joyful conversation among equals and a commitment to life lived in a spirit of adventure. Usually, the woman's father, like in many Shakespearean comedies, functions as a kind of sage who, in one way or another, facilitates her daughter's happiness. In Heartbreaker, the woman's father intervenes to save his daughter from a life of boredom and predictability. This kind of comedy demands very skillful and expressive actors in the lead roles. Hence the problem with this brave effort from France. Melissa Anderson, in her Village Voice review, writes that:" where Frank Capra's 1934 film, like all the classic screwball comedies of its era, treats its cross-purposed leads as equals, Heartbreaker's distaff protagonist remains distant, obscure, and even duller than the English guy". Anderson is referring to the very cute but limited Vanessa Paradis, who is only partly to blame because the writers are clearly more interested in the characterization of the male lead. And that is a serious flaw in a film that is still worth seeing for several reasons including, of course, M. Romain Duris.

[Chris Knipp]

You can see whether the US remake lives up better to your Hollywood classic ideal. Vanessa Paradis has more weight for a French audience than Americans seem to perceive. I've seen US reviews that found her weak as you do. Actually it never occurred to me that this film would play in the States in the French version. Its greater weakness is that it is a bit longer than it needs to be.

[oscar jubis]

It is not a matter of whether the actress is more popular or has "more weight" in one nation or another. It is fundamental to a film with this narrative structure for the lead characters to be of fairly equivalent interest and for the actors who play them to have comparable acting skills and/or performative range.
I did not find the film too long.

[Chris Knipp]

It is not a matter of whether the actress is more popular or has "more weight" in one nation or another. It is fundamental to a film with this narrative structure for the lead characters to be of fairly equivalent interest and for the actors who play them to have comparable acting skills and/or performative range.
I did not find the film too long.

Americans I've watched the film with did find it too long. But if you don't, good. More weight means that for the French audience, Vanessa Paridis is of "fairly equivalent interest," just what you are talking about. The French love her. You also fail to mention the two other actors, Julie Ferrier and François Damiens, who are of pretty much equal importance to the success of the film. L'Arnacoeur got a very high critical rating in France. See Allocine: http://www.allocine.fr/film/fichefilm_gen_cfilm=148441.html. This is very much a French film, despite your claim (justifiable no doubt) that it has antecedants in American comedy. And to say the nation doesn't matter is sim[ply absurd.

You seem to have lost your formal liberalism. Now a certain structure sets a set of inflexible rules independent of nationality. And your newly found pedantry extends to requiring everyone to read a certain canonical work of criticism to know how to watch certain films.

Reading Stanley Cavell's magisterial act of film criticism: "Pursuits of Happiness", is essential to an understanding of the substance and gravity of these very accessible and enjoyable works of art.

Also absurd.