Like a tourist who sticks tightly to some travel agency’s cozy itinerary, the American moviegoer, no matter how adventurous, gets a decidedly skewed impression of any given country’s cinematic output. To judge from the movies that wind up in U.S. arthouses, you’d think that the French, for example, make nothing but literate, philosophical character studies set in sidewalk cafés. Even the occasional bubbly exception, like Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s surprise hit Amélie, seems both more inventive and less formulaic than its American counterparts. So it’s almost comforting, in a way, to see something as thoroughly generic and dopily high-concept as My Best Friend find its way across the Atlantic in advance of its inevitable Hollywood remake. That its director is Patrice Leconte—the man responsible for such elegant imports of yesteryear as Monsieur Hire, Ridicule and The Widow of St. Pierre—may come as a surprise, but consider that Leconte’s previous film, never released here, was Bronzés 3, which was basically the French equivalent of making another Porky’s flick today, using the entire original cast. Clearly, there’s a whole word of stupidité to which we’re not usually privy.
As stale sitcom premises go, My Best Friend’s isn’t half bad. Surly antiques dealer François (Daniel Auteuil) leads a monastically ordered life entirely devoid of joy or spontaneity, though he does impulsively buy a ridiculously expensive Grecian urn at an auction after hearing it described as a testament to undying friendship. When his business partner (Julie Gayet), aghast at his financial recklessness, observes that he has no friends, only clients and acquaintances, François understandably bridles. And so, in the grand tradition of dumbass comedies the world over, a wager is proposed: François has 10 days to produce, in the flesh, his very best friend, or he forfeits his beloved urn. Unfortunately, every single person in his address book recoils from him on sight, or quickly finds an excuse to get off the phone. But perhaps Bruno (Dany Boon), the naturally gregarious cabbie he meets en route to yet another rejection, would be willing to teach him the fundamentals of friendship. Or even—is it possible? they’re so very dissimilar!—become a friend himself, practically against his will.
Mindless, n’est-ce-pas? Can’t you see it already as a vehicle for, say, Robert De Niro and Owen Wilson? No need to wait several years, though—you can experience the same soggy amalgam of pratfalls and pathos in the subtitled version. Leconte, who also co-wrote the screenplay, paints everything in cartoonishly broad strokes, making François so blithely repellent that the wonder isn’t that he has no friends but that he has no assassins. Bruno, predictably, turns out to be equally lonely in his own way, friendly with everybody but intimate with nobody; he needs François as much as François needs him, especially since he’s gearing up for an appearance on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (Care to guess who his lifeline will be?) Both actors are consummate pros—some of you may recall the shambling, jovial Boon from his supporting role in The Valet earlier this year—but there’s only so much you can do with canned scenes like the one in which François seeks help at a bookstore, only to have the clerk bellow “Do we have a copy of How to Make Friends in stock?” across the room before a gaggle of tittering socialites. Stretched to feature length, the scenario becomes as brittle and thin as Auteuil’s fake smile.
All the same, faint echoes of artiness can occasionally be heard. Determined as he seems to be to churn out mall-ready product this time around, Leconte can’t resist indulging one dark interlude, which briefly (and thrillingly) threatens to short-circuit the film’s wacky amiability. As it happens, my favorite Auteuil performance, in a 1992 film called A Heart in Winter, also finds him playing a cold fish—a man utterly incapable of feeling love, even when the luscious Emmanuelle Béart (pre-collagen implants) has surrendered herself to him. That film leaves Auteuil’s character bereft and alone, resigned to his desolation, and for a little while it genuinely looks as if François, having spurned Bruno in his time of need, might suffer a similar fate.
Sappiness ultimately triumphs, of course, but the emotional detour is très French.
My Best Friend
** 1/2
Daniel Auteuil, Dany Boon, Julie Gayet
Directed by Patrice Leconte
Rated PG-13
Opens Friday