The star quality of Laure Calamy has been an open secret since the dazzling success of the French television comedy Dix Pour Cent, bought by Netflix and renamed Call My Agent!, in which she played Noémie, the little assistant of the head of an agency artistic. . Since then she has appeared in a number of saccharine French films, of which this, unfortunately, is another, but its distinctive style and light comedic touch elevate it a bit.
Calamy is Iris, a dentist married to handsome Stéphane (Vincent Elbaz), mother of two teenage daughters, living in an elegant Parisian apartment. But their relationship is now sexless and Iris is having a mid-life crisis, craving a sophisticated French sex comedy equivalent of piña coladas and getting caught in the rain. So Iris downloads a dating app for married cheaters and embarks on a series of secret, light-hearted one-night stands.
It’s silly and fragile but sometimes strangely bold; director and co-writer Caroline Vignal quietly extends certain scenes, extracting their potential for softcore eroticism where the standard romantic comedy would cut smartly, having coyly established what is going to happen. The original French title is Iris et les Hommes, but it was renamed for the English-speaking market with the title of the Weather Girls’ dancefloor classic, which Iris, euphoric after coitus, sings in the street in fantastical style. musical sequence. Again, it’s not a bad moment by any means, although elsewhere the non-sexual scenes are a bit heavy-handed.
We must emphasize a very French aspect of all this. Despite the film’s obvious sentimental narrative orientation toward the restitution of monogamy, it lacks the solemn Anglo-Hollywood need for the cheater to always be solemnly exposed and humiliated. Here, cheating may simply remain unnoticed, quickly passed over as a secret phase or learning experience.
Gn headline
News Source : www.theguardian.com