“I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single” and “Not Here to Be Loved”
How tasty were my little French movies
Whenever I want to get away from the obvious of big Hollywood productions, I turn my attention to French movies. I chose two of them from romantic comedy genre that would hardly reach the general public, but that doesn’t make them any less interesting. The films in question are “I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single” (“Prête-moi ta main”, FRA, 2006) and “Not Here to Be Loved” (“Je ne suis pas là pour être aimé”, FRA, 2005).
I am a little suspicious when talking about French cinema because it certainly is the one that I prefer. This is both for the boldness and easiness with which they treat any subject, as for using actors “not beautiful”, something unthinkable in Hollywood, where only bad guys are ugly.
“I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single”, directed by Eric Lartigau, has the mark of the actor Alain Chabat, who in addition to playing the lead role, gave the idea to the script and also produced the movie. He interprets Luis Costa, a stiff bachelor who works like a “nose” in a perfume industry.
Luis’s life was going very well until he started to face two problems. At work, a client industry wants a very specific perfume, in which he has been working for two years, without being able to reach the desired product. In family life, Luis is forced to bear claims of his four married sisters and his widowed mother, who decide it’s time for him to get married.
To get rid of his family’s complaints and be able to concentrate on work, Luis had a brilliant idea: he hires Emma (Charlotte Gainsbourg), the sister of a friend who is unemployed, to pretend to be his bride. At the time of the wedding, she would not go and he, desolate, would never again want to know about marriage.
The first part was easy. The whole family simply falls in love with Emma, and everyone is fully involved in preparing for the wedding. The problem is that, on learning of the absence of the bride, Luis’ mother, Geneviève (Bernardette Lafont), gets very sick, and he is forced to bring Emma back.
To resolve the situation, another infallible idea: Emma now must do everything to make his family to hate her. But, despite many huge gaffes and barbarities, she is always excused. To complicate matters, Emma had applied to the adoption of a Brazilian child and the breaking of the alleged marriage can harm her plans…
“I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single” is a light, fun and unpretentious romance and although it has an obvious ending, the viewer is still hoping that things will go smoothly.
“Not Here to Be Loved” is a movie that would hardly attract attention in a video store, but is a light, intimate and delicate drama, which mainly deals with love in maturity.
The story is shown through the optics of Jean-Claude (Patrick Chesnais), a man in his fifties who is divorced, and has a life absolutely without emotions, taking account of a notary inherited from his father. Following the tradition, she should hand over the business to his son (Cyril Couton), which had started working with him, but without any enthusiasm.
Jean-Claude’s monotonous routine is only broken on the weekend, when he visits his father (Georges Wilson), who is in an asylum, and spends Sunday afternoons playing Monopoly with him. The elderly guy does nothing but complain to the son during such visits. Jean-Claude’s relationship with his father is cold and distant, just as he has with his own son, who hates the notary and would prefer to stay at home, taking care of his plants.
The new fact that comes to break Jean-Claude’s plastered and unhappy life is when, when doing a check-up with a doctor, he is advised to do some physical activity, otherwise he will die soon. Averse to sports and other efforts, Jean-Claude then decides to enroll in a ballroom dance academy near his office.
At the dance school, full of properly mated couples, he meets Françoise, or Fanfan (Anne Consigny), an attractive woman between the ages of 30 and 40, who is about to get married and wants to learn tango for the wedding party . The groom (Lionel Abelanski) is a writer who suffers from lack of inspiration and never attends dance classes.
While Fan-Fan is harassed by a colleague (Olivier Claverie), Jean-Claude remains absent, participating in the classes but with no interest in anyone in particular. A fact of the past, of Jean-Claude’s mother had taken care of Fan-Fan as a child, causes the two to start a friendship.
The film deals, very delicately, with the construction of their relationship, in the midst of their personal problems, and with dance as the main link. Fanfan is the one who feels most divided, as the wedding preparations are increasing, almost always decided by her mother and sister, while she lives another life due to the dance school.
The discovery of Fanfan’s situation and the death of his father will totally change the life of Jean-Claude, who then discovers that the saddest stories are those that are never told. It will now be up to him to indicate the best paths for his son, for Fanfan and for himself.
For those who are tired of the shots and explosions of blockbusters, I suggest checking out these titles to enjoy a good French movie and remember that often the longest and most difficult journey is the one we take inside us ourselves.