Je vous trouve très beau (2005)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Isabelle Mergault

Writer:

Isabelle Mergault (writer)

Release Date:

11 January 2006 (France)

Genre:

Comedy | Romance

Plot Keywords:

Letter | Immigrant | Mail Order Bride | Farmer | Older Man Younger Woman Relationship

Awards:

2 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Michel Blanc	...	Aymé Pigrenet
Medeea Marinescu	...	Elena
Wladimir Yordanoff	...	Roland Blanchot
Benoît Turjman	...	Antoine
Eva Darlan	...	Mme Marais
Elisabeth Commelin	...	Françoise
Valérie Bonneton	...	Maître Labaume
Julien Cafaro	...	Thierry
Valentin Traversi	...	Jean-Paul
Raphaël Dufour	...	Nicolas
Choukri Gabteni	...	Le patron du café
Agnès Boury	...	Huguette
Tadrina Hocking	...	Nicole
Nathalie Jouin	...	Sylvie
Renée Le Calm	...	La grand-mère

Also Known As:

La fille de l'Est (France) (working title)
You Are So Beautiful (USA) (literal English title)

Runtime:

France:97 min

Country:

France

Language:

French | Romanian

Color:

Color

Certification:

Switzerland:7 (canton of Geneva) | Switzerland:7 (canton of Vaud) | France:U | Brazil:14 | South Korea:12

Filming Locations:

Bucharest Airport, Bucharest, Romania

Company:

Gaumont

Trivia:

Visa d'exploitation en France #111757.

Movie Connections:

Remade as You Are So Handsome (2009)

Soundtrack:

Quand il est mort le poète

Je vous trouve un film très agréable

This is a nice romantic comedy about a French farmer who needs a wife (or cheap labourer) to run his farm, and who gets hitched to a young Romanian girl who needs money to raise her daughter.

The big problem with this movie is that the girl is tragically miscast. She is played by a talented young actress, who unfortunately can't patch over the fact that she is so painfully clearly out of her love interest's league. She's one of those surreally waifish girls the French adore so much. It's a case of the beauty and the beast, and it just doesn't hold water. Apart from that, a good movie. Until the farmer's visit to Romania to pick up his wife, it's a hilarious comedy, after that it's a complex (if implausible), and surprisingly intriguing, love story.

Michel Blanc is brilliant in a very difficult role. He's at the same time pompous and boyish, and would be the ideal match for an unlikely love story.

The unsung star of this movie is the entremetteuse, Eva Darlan. She is vivacious, beautiful and terribly funny. The movie loses a lot when she drops out of the plot. I think she would have been a much better, and not least much more credible, Elena.

Another problem with this movie is that they picked Romania as the rent-a-bride's country of origin. Fifteen years ago this would have been believable. Nowadays everybody knows that Romania isn't so bad as to make pretty girls so desperate to leave it that they'd gladly hitch up to a middle-aged French hillbilly. I don't understand why the writer didn't pick a more exotic and desperate country, Albania maybe or Ossietia or whatever.

If you're looking for humour and don't mind a hefty dollop of implausible romance, this is your movie.