Friday 15 April 2011

Little White Lies

Not to be confused with the independent film magazine.

Little White Lies
(or Les petits mouchoirs, if you insist on being pretentious) is this year's 'must-see French film'. This is mainly because us English folk can only stand watching one subtitled film a year. And whilst it is certainly very well observed, it's 154 minute running time is a gross overestimate of an audience's attention span for a dromedy.

Starring an impressive ensemble cast (including everybody's favourite token French chick, Marion Cotillard), it is a story of a group of friends who make the rather unethical decision to go on holiday whilst a dear friend of their's recovers from a horrific car crash. However, the seemingly pleasant holiday spirals into a mass of revelations and confessions - potentially ruining all of their friendships.

"Look, it's that token French chick!"

Despite the film being about quite a repugnant group of self-obsessed people, there is a lot to enjoy from this movie. The comedic elements are superb, especially from François Cluzet's character Max, who spends the whole film trying to exterminate an intruding family of raccoons. And some of the relationship storylines are heartbreakingly well observed. But by the 3rd act the story finds itself in a viscous loop of repeating the same scenes again and again. So much so that the film loses all emotional impact by its finale, which should have had the whole audience in floods of tears.

Cut this film down by an hour and you'd have a 5 star movie. But as it is: 3 and a half stars. Great Soundtack though...

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