French actor-turned-director Guillaume Canet impressed with his debut http://www.detroitredwingsteamstore.com … all-jersey , Tell No One, but this follow-up is self-indulgent tosh

French film-maker Guillaume Canet scored a mammoth hit with 2006?s high-concept Tell No One, and then promptly suffered a crisis of faith and a bout of depression. His response is a grand act of unbottling, a personal cri-de-coeur, laughing through the tears as it trails a bunch of affluent thirtysomethings on a summer vacances to Cap Ferrat. Once there, the ensemble cast (Beno卯t Magimel, Marion Cotillard, Fran莽ois Cluzet) gather around the table, clinking glasses, kissing cheeks and blurting so many secret longings that they almost drown out the sound of the lawnmower, as well as the weasels that have somehow snuck into their loft insulation. This may be personal; it may even be true. But that that doesn鈥檛 necessarily make it work as drama. Instead, Little White Lies unspools as glossy, high-grade tosh, a sun-dappled Big Chill, without the rigour or insight required to make you care about these people and wonder which bed they will eventually wind up in.

Little White Lies Download
Little White Lies Download

Fans of The Artist鈥檚 Oscar-winning star Jean Dujardin will be delighted to see that he can do caddish modern-day egotist as well as he does caddish silent-film-era egotist. In the opening scene of Little White Lies, the camera tracks Mr. Dujardin, as Ludo, through a club as he looks for cocaine, brusquely propositions girls, dances like an ape to outdated pop music and finally hops on a motorcycle. The camera trails from a respectable distance鈥攖he perfect distance to capture Ludo鈥檚 motorcycle getting hit by an oncoming truck.

Little White Lies, with its first cut, becomes a radically different film than it might have been: the story of a Parisian rake becomes the tale of a group of friends banding together in the face of mortality. However, they鈥檙e not supporting the hospitalized Ludo; they鈥檙e going on a pre-planned vacation that was originally set to include an able-bodied Ludo. Though he can鈥檛 make it, a sense of foreboding manages to join them on the trip.

Among the vacationers are host Max (Fran莽ois Cluzet), who is obsessive about the quality of his summer home, destroying walls in the hunt for weasels, and Vincent (Beno卯t Magimel), who鈥檚 not gay鈥攔eally! He just really, really loves Max. And has confessed to him. And the two have mutually decided to get past it. Meanwhile, Antoine (Laurent Lafitte) is so obsessed with the texts his ex is sending him that he drives a motorboat onto dry land, while Marie (Marion Cotillard), Ludo鈥檚 former girlfriend, feels regret over leaving Ludo鈥檚 bedside and a palpable boredom with her old routine of seducing that she can鈥檛 help but keep enacting.

If this sounds like a strange m茅lange of comedy and drama, well, it is, in precisely the manner of The Big Chill, the new classic that Little White Lies emulates down to its soundtrack of American pop and rock standards. The characters are purposefully distracting themselves from aging and death by discrediting the louche persona of the absent Ludo, whose vices have made him the first of the gang to suffer major misfortune. And yet their distractions lend the film its humor, as the viewers鈥?attentions, along with the characters鈥? drift far from his hospital room. The performances and, in turn, the on-screen relationships indicate the sort of chemistry only a group of longtime friends can share.

Yet the diversions of the group are indulged for far too long. Like a real vacation, Little White Lies goes from fun to exhausting around the halfway mark, as certain scenes drag on. Why are we spending movie minutes watching the gang frolic in the water to Creedence Clearwater Revival? And why, when the water sports get too vicious and lead to a breakdown that has Marie screaming at her friends, does the camera cut away just as she鈥檚 reaching high dudgeon? The only consequence is that Marie gets revenge鈥攚e suppose it鈥檚 鈥渞evenge鈥濃€攂y spraying one of her tormentors with whipped cream. It鈥檚 not that the film is too long, necessarily. It鈥檚 that director Guillaume Canet (Ms. Cotillard鈥檚 real-life partner) is too much a member of the group, seeking to convey minor incident at length while pushing major developments onto the back burner鈥攐ften presented mute with a pop soundtrack overlay. The actors deserve better.

And when they鈥檙e given the space to really act, the cast works wonders. Ms. Cotillard, who has struggled in English-language films despite having been given opportunities to work with practically ever major filmmaker in America and Europe, feels here like a newcomer, or perhaps a comeback artist. The dull Christopher Nolan days are forgotten. Rather than playing some outsized femme fatale or object of desire, Ms. Cotillard nails the role of a woman afraid of her own future, and haunted by her past. Mr. Magimel does his part as well, in the story line in which Mr. Canet鈥檚 refusal to commit fully to high drama actually succeeds: we never get a full sense of how or why Vincent realized he was in love with his best male friend, and there鈥檚 no tiresome exposition. The film, in this case, seems like the best part of hanging out with longtime friends鈥攊nformation just bubbles from the ether, its origin forgotten.

By the time the film ends, the characters have all reckoned with their selfishness鈥攁nd their apparent lightheartedness, and seemingly ironic fun, throughout seem almost savagely insouciant. The movie justifies, in some sense, its focus on the fun that Marie, Max and company have had when it finally indicts them for their cruelty to Ludo. While it takes some work and attentiveness to get to this point, the film鈥檚 evolution into a critique of 30-something self-absorption makes it a small-scale success.

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