You Are So Beautiful

I can't rate this film because I saw only about the first half of it on a flight back from Paris. What I saw I loved.

Comedy doesn't travel well. I'm an American, dyed in the wool, and I normally find French comedy annoying--self-conscious and stilted. This movie, however, is funny, and I give most of the credit to Michel Blanc. He is subtly hilarious as the single-minded rube trying to replace his dead wife-cum-farmhand-cum-cook-cum-housekeeper the way you or I might try to replace a pair of comfortable old shoes with new ones. He just can't make the clerk understand.

I like hard comedy--vicious satire, outrageous parody, clever wordplay--and this movie is none of those. It could hardly be more conventional. The plot is that of a TV sitcom episode, and the script is studied and tame. Still, I laughed out loud every few minutes, and taking into account jet lag and nicotine deprivation, that's saying something.

J'ai trouve cette film tres beau. A lovely little film that was very funny, if not a little disjointed. All the laughs seemed to occur in the first half of the program, with the sadness of the heroine overtaking the hilarity when the full realisation of her situation hits.

A French farm couple live a fairly spartan existence, with him tending the fields and her looking after the house and the cows. Unfortunately, the second-hand milking machine blows-up, electrocuting the farmer's wife. This is where the fun starts.

Unable to cope with household chores, our farmer resorts to a marriage agency and finds himself in Bucharest, interviewing prospective young women. Although short round and bald, all the girls are trained to tell him he is handsome. (Je vous trouve tres beau). He finds this bewildering. However, he chooses one young woman desperate enough to leave Rumania.

Hiding the fact that he has procured a woman from Eastern Europe, the couple return to France, where she puts the house in order. Even the dog becomes loving under her touch. However, the farmer, long dormant in the love department, appears to be resistant to her advances. Nevertheless, he does fall for her charms, realises she is desperately unhappy, and pretending that she has won a trifecta, generously (for the first time in his life?) gives her the money to return home and be secure.

This film is amusing and emotional. It reflects country living in France and the sad situation of people living in Eastern Europe, with humour and sensitivity. You will enjoy this film, as long as you don't love cats.

This is a charming story of unlikely companions cast together by circumstance and hard choices. It is interesting to see how the protagonists use their situation, once they have committed initially to their self interests, to pay each other back, and with love and compassion eventually find what they do not expect. Each phase of this progression is clearly imprinted in the viewer's experience from both points of view in a very patient, but not slow, immersion into the characters' hearts and psyches. The effect of this is to erase the viewer's point of view and leave the audience with a memorable impression of the whole, which is beautiful to behold.

This film will probably not be remembered in 10 years but it does not matter as it's not meant to be a 7th art masterpiece. The plot is simple but interesting, based on two facts: - the difficulty for French farmers to find spouses willing to settle in a farm; - the difficulty for young Romanians to get a decent job in their own country;

A market-oriented solution would be to bring together the offer and the demand. And it's exactly what the dating company is doing. The problem is that human beings, unlike goods, have feelings: - it's hard for a French farmer to understand a girl from Romania; - it's hard for a Romanian girl to leave her country and her past behind.

It's a nice reminder to those criticizing immigrants that it's always a last-resort and heart-breaking solution to move away from home in search for better conditions.

Two great actors: Michel Blanc and Medeea Constantinescu.

Last but not least, life in Romania is far from being as dull as the film pretends.

Loved the movie! I chose to see this French movie, though I knew nothing about it and wished for a light romantic comedy. I received much more. Not a "funny" comedy but a "chamber" movie with two chamber players, gentle, touching and heart-warming. I loved every character's portrayal, including Ciufu the dog. Coming out of the cinema, I saw smiling faces and overheard men commenting, in surprise, that they did enjoy the movie. The matching of an older -not exactly handsome- man with a younger, vivacious woman, reminded me of two other movies (that quite differ):

1. "Alexandre Le bienheureux",1967,(Philippe Noiret v.Marlene Jobert)- (Hilarious!)

2. "As good as it gets" (Jack Nicholson v. Helen Hunt)- (saw it twice and still find the chemistry unconvincing).

I shall definitely add this movie to my DVD collection.