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Mes Amis, Mes Amours (2008)

Director: Lorraine Levy

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From Time Out London

A little less realist than ‘Mary Poppins’, director Lorraine Levy’s undemanding French-language  romantic comedy concocts an amusing, laughably cosy, French enclave in ‘polite, nice, clean’ South Kensington. ‘Londoners call it “frog alley”,’ says Bernadette Lafont’s maternal Yvonne, introducing new arrival Parisian divorcee Vincent Lindon to the regulars in her ersatz  SW7 bistro.

The rudimentary plot, adapted from a book by the director’s brother, plays an ‘odd couple’ variant, pairing him in a mock ‘marriage’ in a shared  mews house with neurotic, rule-making, fellow single-parent Pascal Elbé, from whom Lindon tries to keep secret his love affair with sexy reporter Virginie Ledoyen. Trading mainly on the truculent charm and romantic vulnerability of  49-year-old domestic French star Lindon, it’s local colour is almost entirely architectural – and touristic – save for veteran Richard Syms’s bizarrely Dickensian bookshop owner and an untranslated cab driver who tells Lindon to stop nervously tapping his door: ‘It’s a taxi, not an ’orse!’

Author: Wally Hammond 2008-07-01 12:59:52

Time Out London Issue 1976, July 3 - 9 2008

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Mes Amis, Mes Amours

Cast & crew

Director: Lorraine Levy

Cast: Virginie Ledoyen, Bernadette Lafont, Vincent Lindon full cast

Genre(s): Comedy


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