AN AMAZING COUPLE (Un couple epatant)
Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten Grade: C Magnolia Pictures Directed by: Lucas Belvaux Written by: Lucas Belvaux Cast: Ornella Muti, Francois Morel, Varerie Mairesse, Bernard Mazzinghi, Dominique Blanc, Gilbert Melki Screened at: Tribeca Grand Hotel, NYC, 7/14/03
At a time that what passes for something new under the sun is the use of multiple movie panels for "Terminator 3" to simulate the comic book page, it's refreshing to watch Lucas Belvaux's experiment unfold. His three films this year do not break ground in the stunning way that "Mulholland Drive" did, and his overall concept of punching out a trilogy of films, some characters appearing as primary actors in one while taking secondary roles in others, is not altogether original. Aeschylus's "Oresteia" trilogy, anyone? The difference, though, is that the Oresteia trilogy is tragic, tragic and tragic, while Belvaux creates three separate genres as he follows his people from one story to the next.
Writer-director Lucas Belvaux bares the first segment of his tripartite soul in a movie reviewed on these pages with the political thriller, "Cavale," or "On the Run" as the French title is rather freely translated. Belvaux himself plays the key person, Bruno, a far-left revolutionary who breaks out of jail after some fifteen years only to find the forces of reaction at work in French society. The workers are in worse shape than they were during the late sixties and seventies, but where did the revolution go? His own Patty Hearst has settled down and wants no part of in "Les Miserables." In the final offering, the director's Bruno is out of the picture, having become the abominable snowman, and Pascal (Gilbert Melki), a cop with a morphine-addicted wife, is to make a play for a high-school teacher. Our word on "After the Life" will come later.
That leaves us with the middle of the sandwich. Since political thriller and melodrama have been taken by numbers one and three respectively, Belvaux selects light, romantic comedy for "Un couple epatant." That's "An Amazing Couple" to us. What's amazing to Belvaux is not so mind-blowing to me. "An Amazing Couple" is a lame comedy loosely following in the footsteps of the king of farce, George Feydeau. If this film played out in a single, three-bedroom house, we'd be watching a flat-out farce, albeit one considerably less amusing than "A Flea in Her Ear," or "Hey, Cut Out the Parading Around Stark Naked."
In "Un couple epatante" Belvaux appears to say that we'd all be in a lot less trouble if we only told the truth. Lies have a way of catching up to us. Alain Costes (Francois Morel) is a hypochondriac certain that his doctor and family friend George Colinet (Bernard Mazzinghi) is not telling him the truth. Alain thinks he must undergo a serious operation and will not pull through. To avoid alarming his loving (and stunning, I must say) wife, Cecile (Ornella Muti), he carries on in a secretive way that makes Cecile thinks that he is having a affair; perhaps with his secretary, Claire (Valerie Mairesse). (Aside: Anyone who would choose Claire over Cecile is not a hypochrondriac but a genuinely sick man.) Cecile hires a cop, Pascal (Gilbert Mleki) to follow her husband, little realizing that Pascal like any red- blooded Francophile man would fall for her, in this case a wise choice given the reality of his straying, morphine-addicted, wife, Agnes (Dominique Blanc).
Audience members fluent in French just may have the advantage over those of us who speak merely the world's most beautiful language. Subtitles are never a replacement for the real thing. Still, Francois Morel, irritating rather than amusing, has nothing on Woody Allen in the role of a hypochrondriac. Ironically, while Belvaux seeks originality, in this second episode he falls back on a same ol', same ol' comedy of would-be sexual roundelays and mistaken impressions.
Not Rated. 100 minutes. 2003 by Harvey Karten at Harveycritic@cs.com
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