The Price to Pay (2007)

This movie is a very mixed bag of positives and negatives.On the negative side: it is very formulaic. A husband wants to win back his wife's love, so he does foolish things, such a pretending to have a mistress to make her jealous. Everything backfires and, to take revenge, she takes a lover of sorts. Those are all clichés, and have nothing new to offer.On the positive side: Christian Clavier and Nathalie Baye - and Patrick Chesnais - are all in top form, to the extent that one can be with very limited material. They create real, interesting, likable characters out of their roles.So: the movie is worth watching for the acting by the leads. Just try to ignore the plot.

It's a movie mainly about rich people and their problems and i don't give a s..t, especially if it's french bourgeoisie in Paris. With all their money, their cars, their shopping and fine clothing, their maid, their driver, they don't have any dust of intelligence or wisdom and they are poor in communicating and sharing together. If their only goals in life are money and sex, well, they don't know what life is about. In addition, this movie isn't funny because it tries to make laugh by taking shoots at the daily life of common people, that's to say us! Geraldine is the only welcoming light in this crap and she is clever enough to run away from it.

The title means, "No a**, no cash." The sense conveyed by those words pretty handily sums up the light-but-heavy nature of this film. Jean-Pierre has it all: successful career, beautiful wife, pretty daughter, lots of money, a fabulous apartment and a personal driver to boot. And like so many people of his station in life, he is unhappy.The reason: his wife, Odile, is also unhappy with their marriage. However, she does not show her unhappiness; she simply casts it aside by not putting out and by going about her lunching and shopping. After seven years of this, Jean-Pierre has had enough. He lets his problems slip to his chauffeur Richard, who has a similar problem, sans argent. But Richard knows what he WOULD do if he had money--and he suggests Jean-Pierre do the same.Bye, bye, carte bleue (the universal French debit card) ! The premise is entertaining and the actors are excellent. The visuals are not spectacular for a film set in the Paris region, but that fits quite well with the theme: nouveaux riches with too much money, too much time, no taste at all and in general no substance, virility or profondeur. On the whole, the Ménard foyer is one of materialism and avoidance--thus the source of the problem.However, the poor man doesn't get off any better: between Richard's misplaced machism and unwillingness or inability to communicate on complex ideas and Caroline's inflated ego and voluntary emotional detachment, that marriage is also on the rocks.The longer the film goes on, though, the more it suffers: the premise is comic enough but the themes and the substance are very heavy, and the ultimate development of events leads to something that simply cannot be swallowed comically. The last third or so of the film would work much better as a melodrama, but it is not properly executed as such.The ending is a welcome positive note, but on the whole I have to think that this would have been much better had it been shot on a more up-scale, serious, "classical" level.

Frankly, the trailers for this film looked a lot more promising than what the finished product turned out to be. We are presented with what appears to be the way bored people with money do with their meaningless lives. Now, we are not opposed that Odile, a woman in a marriage that has seen better days, spends her time in the pricey Parisian boutiques frequented by women like her. After all, if she gets her kicks out of doing that, let her have her fun.In the meantime, her husband Jean-Pierre is at his wits ends trying to win the affection of her wife. Instead of dealing directly with the problem, he follows his chauffeur Richard's advice seizing Odile's credit cards. If he thinks he will get away with that, he's got another thing coming to him. Richard, the driver, it turns out, has the same problems his boss has, without the money element.Alexandra Leclere, the writer/director of this French farce, touches on themes that are deeper than what one sees on the screen. Consumerism, machismo, and non-communication between couples that have been married for a while, are some of the themes behind this comedy.The exceptional cast gathered for the picture deserved better material than what they were given. The marvelous Natalie Baye does all she can with Odile. Christian Claver, who plays Jean-Pierre, makes a good impression. Gerard Lanvin's Richard is instrumental in giving his boss the solution for all his problems. Geraldine Pailhas appears as the wife of Richard, a lady with her own problems in a marriage that is also having difficulties.There are a few laughs, but in the end the film doesn't completely satisfy. One wishes Ms. Leclere better luck next time.