Artivels Undescribable Perfection

ThiefHott Too much of everything

Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Salubfoto It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

SnoopyStyle Arthur Martin (Jacques Gamblin) is a reserved member of the Office of Epizootic Diseases. He has an interview on the radio. Left-wing opinionated Baya Benmahmoud (Sara Forestier) is taking calls for the station. She bursts in on the interview to complain. Martin's Jewish mother hid from the Nazis and changed her name. She was glad to marry Arthur's French father and take his name. Arthur isn't too happy with his name either which is the name of a popular cooker. Baya's father is Algerian. His family members were killed by the military. Baya's mother is a hippie from an upper class French family. She was happy to lose her name and gain an Arab name. Arthur's family represses their haunted history while Baya's family is boisterous and political. She was sexually molested by a neighbor as a child and is very sexually liberated as an adult. On the other hand, he's very repressed. She uses sex to convert 'fascists' to her politics. Despite being a socialist, he catches her eye and they become an odd pairing as she continues to try to convert 'fascists' from all sides.Normally, I have difficulties with French comedies. It may be the cultural barrier or it may simply be reading the subtitles. There is something distancing about having to read a joke rather than have it performed. Sara Forestier is able to break through with her expressiveness. She is enchanting, sexy and magnetic. Jacques Gamblin also has a great deal of charm. His expressions are the perfect foil for her. They work brilliantly together. There are real big laughs in this and that is rare for me with foreign language verbal jokes. Physical humor is without borders but written jokes have a harder time crossing those borders. It's also a great romance. His support for her father is pure romanticism. This is a great unconventional rom-com.

krool1969 It is the ultimate "opposites attract" love story. Arthur Martin is a perfectly ordinary (15207 other men in France share his name) shy, conservative late-middle aged single man working for the Government. He was raised by boring scientist technophiles who have consistently invested in great ideas that all turn out to be flops.Baya Benmahmoud is a one of a kind (She is the only person in France named Baya Benmahmoud) young, beautiful, intelligent but scattered brained super-liberal activist raised by her hippy mother and illegal immigrant Algerian father. Her mission in life is to sleep with conservative "fascists" in order to turn them to the proper liberal ideal.Baya finds Artur and launches her "make love not war" mission. She follows her proved method turning his world up-side-down. But this time, perhaps Baya has finally met her match. Everything changes for Baya when Arthur performs a kindness for her father that turns Baya's world up-side-down."If you can't trust the ducks, that is a bad sign."

Victoria Weisfeld I must have watched a French comedy and put the titles of all the films previewed on my Netflix list, because they keep coming. Bienvenue! This 2010 film from France is the latest—a pleasant farce directed by Michel Leclerc and written by him and Baya Kasmi. It won three César Awards in 2011, including for best writing. The story is about a young woman who uses sex as a weapon to persuade conservative politicians—men whom she considers "right-wing" in general—to embrace more liberal attitudes. From this comes some satirical moments, too, touching on the impermanence of supposed firmly held beliefs and the pitfalls of stereotyping ethnic and religious groups based simply on how they look or what their names are. Half-Algerian, the young woman's name is Baya Benmahmoud,and she says, "no one in France has that name." But she tackles one person too many when she confronts Arthur Martin—"15,207 people in France have the same name," he tells us—a middle-aged scientist who does necropsies on dead birds, in order to detect possible human illnesses. Why are you scaring people? she demands to know at their first confrontational meeting. The free spirit and the buttoned-up scientist are, of course, destined to fall for each other. The filmmakers show us how the two protagonists do not escape their childhoods, and we see them as children, as children commenting on their adult selves, and the fireworks when their polar opposite families, alas, meet. In his New York Times review, Stephen Holden says the movie "has the tone and structure of early-to-middle Woody Allen,but infused with a dose of Gallic identity politics." Sara Forestier is charming as the irrepressible extrovert Baya (she also snagged a César), and Jacques Gamblin is a persuasive match. A fun movie when you just want to be happily entertained (note: nudity)

Matthew Stechel I saw this movie literally to get out of the intense heat a couple of nights ago not expecting or even knowing that much about it and that's prob the best way to approach it. Its a very nice and deceptively light french film about the ridiculousness of people's beliefs and the ridiculousness that other people will go to to change these beliefs. Film wants to and very much succeeds in wanting to merge people's personal beliefs with their political ones but in a way that is both light and sweet and funny without being either too maudlin and sad or too lightweight.Film features a radical liberal who knowing that talk will never get anyone to change their minds prefers to let her body do the talking for her. (she engages in intercourse to get other people to change their minds--just how she does it is explained in the film although its a fair question as to whether or not it would actually work in real life or not.)One day she hears this uptight doctor on the phone and decides to seduce him--not knowing that he brings his own rather heavy baggage with him in the form of family history, parental beliefs informing his own beliefs and just about everything you can imagine really. She in turn brings her own baggage (fam history, parental beliefs, and also current relationship with parents)but she never doubts her own abilities to change anyone's minds for a second.Needless to say they fall for one another and an attachment gets made and now the 2 of them have to overcome a lot to make it work if they're gonna make it work at all. This is not a spoiler to say that this is what happens--because the bulk of the movie is the 2 leads trying to get their stuff in tune with one another so that they can continue to more or less lead the lives they were living just with each other instead of without.Its not an easy tone to pull off given the balance that is needed to offset real world beliefs with the warmth and heart needed to make a successful romantic comedy but this one managed to do it more so then any recent film i can recall seeing which is damn impressive. Its actually quite Woody Allenish in some way which is even more impressive as most who try to copy Allen can't quite get the heart part right. Much like some of Woody Allen's films this film even brings in some really heavy duty topics with an amazingly light touch. Things like the holocaust, the war of Algerian independence, and modern day conservatism vs modern day liberalism all manage to get touched upon and discussed but never in a way that's heavy handed or brings the movie to a halt. Film always amazingly manages to maintain a lightness of touch and this is in no small part because of the very zesty and very lively performance of Sara Forstier in the lead role. She is like Sophia Loren in some of her more lively performances one who clearly loves life and one who doesn't really care or need other people to tell her how she should live it and its one that should her career take off--it'll be this role that people look back on 10, 20 years from now and say Viva La France!