No, no, after you, I insist. Seriously.
You know it's a bad cinematic experience when you find yourself adding together the little green numbers on the VCR, trying to figure out exactly how much longer your brain will be consigned to movie purgatory. ***image1***
Après Vous
could have been a lively French farce in the spirit of Racine or Molière, but is instead one of those capers in which people utter all their lines in hoarse stage whispers and cower behind potted plants, always on the verge of being discovered. What precisely would be so awful about being discovered isn't quite clear, yet we worry for awhile on their behalfs anyway, gamely, until about two-thirds of the way through the movie-the point where I started doing arithmetic to figure out exactly how many more minutes of the thing I had to watch.
We begin with Antoine (Daniel Auteuil), a pathologically eager-to-help chap, late as usual to dinner with his girlfriend because he can't say no to anyone at the schwanky restaurant where he's manager. ***image2***Taking a shortcut through a park, whom should he behold but the unhappy Louis (José Garcia), teetering atop his suitcase, about to hang himself from a tree branch. Antoine saves his life and, in a curious obverse of the usual received wisdom, rather than Louis being obligated to him, the codependent Antoine feels compelled to forge for Louis a life worth living. Without much prodding, Louis reveals the reason for his despondency: He has been rejected by the lovely flower-shop girl Blanche (Sandrine Kilberlam), and Antoine resolves to pursue her and win her back for Louis. In the fine tradition of Miles Standish and Cyrano de Bergerac, we know precisely what will happen; and it does, but not for another two hours. Along the way Antoine embarks on a series of desperate Louis-improving actions, ranging from driving all night so grandméré won't read the obsolete suicide note to finagling a position at the restaurant for his depressed friend-as the unlikeliest of sommelliers, where Louis begins by nervously recommending Burgundy to accompany a fish course.
Auteuil here is close to perfect. His quiet instincts hold up the entire mess at times, his professionalism never more evident than when he's onscreen with lesser vehicles, or when the screenplay falters. And it's nice to see him apparently enjoying himself, not struggling through the usual lugubrious French tragedy in which we're accustomed to seeing him (he'll always be Ugolin in
Jean de Florette
and
Manon des sources
). Auteuil deftly delivers set pieces such as frantically miming behind someone's back, and a drunken bit with a lobster. It's unfortunate, though, because he would have been brilliant in something more sophisticated than what amounts to an ultra-long episode of Frasier.
In the end
Après Vous
straddles a strange gray DMZ-not quite whimsical and fantastic enough to bring in the
Amélie
people, and too hardcore for the
Chocolat
crowd (far too many
quelle salopes
and
putain merdes
). Still, it does have one of the best stand-alone lines so far this year ("You can't just take people's morphine!"); and France's most garden-variety rom-com usually can't help but be more interesting than its Yankee counterpart. Parlay
Après Vous
against the likes of, oh, say,
Must Love Dogs
, and the French will always make off with the yellow jersey.
