Antiques dealer François (Daniel Auteuil) is a self-centred, stone-hearted sort, the kind of cad who only goes to a business contact’s funeral to get his hands on a valuable objet. Confronted about his unsociability by his business partner (Julie Gayet), he bets her the €200,000 Greek vase he’s just charged to company expenses that he can produce his best friend by the end of the month. Thus, he must embark on an embarrassing quest for friendship – ‘Some people can’t play sports. I can’t make friends,’ he confesses – which leads to a few classes from taxi-driver Bruno (Dany Boon) who, to François’s admiration, seems to make friends with everyone he meets… Patrice Leconte’s (‘Ridicule’, ‘L’Homme du Train’) film begins as a sharp comic dissection of modern neuroses, then downshifts to farce with François’s humiliating attempts at chumminess. It’s funny, incisive, if occasionally broad stuff, up until a catastrophic final-act meltdown, cringingly involving the French ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionnaire?’, a million-euro question and just the one lifeline left… Leconte might be looking for some new pals himself after that one.
