Priceless (2006)

A nice setting on the Cote d'Azur, a delicious Audrey Tautou, a shy but sufficiently intriguing Gad Elmaleh and a good chemistry between them would be enough to make a comedy entertaining. And "Priceless" is indeed a pleasant French romance-comedy, let's add also some playful attitude, which remains playful till the end. The movie avoids too sappy scenes, and keeps up an enjoyable cheeky tone, with a consciousness of the nature of these relationships between wealthy men/women and their escorts, but wise enough to move the camera away when curtains are drawn or lights are turned off, simply because the mood of the picture has to remain lively, not serious, not even passionate. The ending is predictable, but it could not be otherwise, and you'll like also for its gentle and delicate progressing to that necessarily predictable finale. And if you look at dresses, well, you will fall in love with Audrey Tautou's splendid evening dresses...

Imagine Buster Keaton pretending to be a cabana boy and Amelie Poulain propelling herself with a sexually pragmatic thrust verging on sluttiness, though Tautou and/or her character never crosses into bad taste, - and there you have it: perhaps the only candidate around for a 21st century "Breakfast at Tiffany's", as another reviewer said, or, I would add, an updated version of "To Catch a Thief" frothiness.But since this is a story of luxurious sexual traffic, this is cross-bread with a realistic grittiness, mostly coming from the secondary characters and accurately so, welcome all the more because it is somewhat unexpected. Pragmatic pungency is something one expects at some point or other in a french film where sexual matters occur. It is elegantly pulled off, and with resonant darker undertones, as with the scene where Tautou is left at the pool shivering and goes from up to low the second time round: "What a fool!" she exclaims, since she is abandoned the second time round, and since it is happening again, it is all the more humanizing, in a way. I also loved the "I would like to...I...no...I want to...", that had something of the pop salaciousness of Gainsbourgh/Birkin's "I love you...neither do I".The best part for me is towards the end, when Irene asks Jean to seduce another woman so that she could rejoin the one she was with. Seduction is a potent pastime in french culture, and I am also thinking of the superb theoretical spin the french theorist Jean Baudrillard gave the word: seduction is a ritual superior to desire, it tries to strip the object from its shadow, it restores sublimity the moment it teaches us how to disappear, not just simply be annihilated...It is a very poetic, challenging thought, explaining also a lot about french idiosyncrasies, I think. And I was thrilled to discover that a french team dared give it a spin that read like this: to seduce another is a proof and a challenge of love! I don't know if this is somewhat neo-catholic (giggles), but I thought it was delicious, yes, to love is to seduce the third party the one you love asks you to! Priceless!

Audrey Tatou is stunning, giving a complex performance as the sexy, conniving, vulnerable and ready to love Irène. The character is a gold-digger reminiscent of that other Audrey, Hepburn, in Breakfast at Tiffany's, and Priceless manages to achieve the same tension of elegance and decadence, playful banter and fraught undertones. There is something very dark about the scene where Irène, dumped by her latest rich beau, and left literally with only the bikini she has on, sits shivering at poolside while the sun sets and the place chances from bathers to dinner jackets. In an instant she goes from queen of her arena to a spectator. It is a complex tone shift few Hollywood (or British) rom-coms manage to attempt, never mind pull off.Gad Elmaleh as Jean is perfectly love-struck and versatile. Strong support comes from Marie-Christine Adam as the hard but equally self-deluding Madeleine, and Vernon Dobtcheff as Irène's first victim, Jacques. There is something quite grown-up and yet naively innocent about this film, with characters who can do the most awful things but never enough to stop you caring about them. Vivid colour palette, and slickly shot, the music works well, too. Well worth seeing.

French movies.... why they cant be like American movies? Audrey Tatou is beautiful and since Amelie I realized she had potential, but men, both are very slow motion movies, those kind of movies that suddenly makes you feel that nothing is happening and nothing is going to happen, you need to have a very good patience to finish this kind of movies because there is a lot of people that if in the first 30 minutes they don't get the idea of the story they just leave, and there is something about the guy that appeared like the Audrey's friend, isn't there in France another better looking actor? Audrey she's pretty, she must appear kissing very handsome guys, but no, she appears in this movie with a very strange man that reminds me a lot to the new James Bond, the same weird eyes, but talking about the story, its not the better that I've always seen.