Such a frustrating disappointment

Simply Perfect

One of my all time favorites.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

First of all,I would like to answer the reviewer who, in his insightful comment ,wrote that to appreciate French movies,you have got to be familiar with Molière ,La Fontaine,and co!As this reviewer wrote from the USA ,I'd tell him that,to appreciate the American movies ,say,of the fifties,you do not have to be familiar with Dreiser,Williams ,Miller,Steinbeck Et Al.French women directors ,more and more,make their presence felt in the French cinema ;the psychic daughters of Jacqueline Audry (much more than Varda),their subject is often women and they do it better than their male counterparts.In spite of a disappointing ending,"On A Failli Etre Amies" is much fun to watch ,particularly in its first hour,full of funny,nay hilarious scenes;besides Emmanuelle Devos and Karine Viard give superlative performances.The depiction of the vocational training center is a sensational moment: the lozenge metaphor nobody understands (the others just pretend) by a self-satisfied would be highbrow whose teaching skills are not up to scratch;the "answer" (the job Carole is looking for) of the computer may become a classic scene : the machine goes on repeating" falconer" ;the accident (how is it possible on a straight road ?,says the angry cook)When we meet Carole,she lacks self-assurance and self-confidence ,although her husband makes gourmet dishes (and I mean gourmet!) in his chic restaurant "Le Moulin Bleu" ;this skilled cook seems to outstrip her .In direct contrast with her,Marithé is the young executive,with good prospects ,but ,unlike her colleague,she has her way with her trainees :Carole's husband is to open a bistro? - let's notice that this bistro is not a cheap place like the French know,and this is a misnomer- presto,new jobs for her unemployed people! Little by little,as Carole gains assurance,it is at Marithé 's expense !The timid woman is some kind of vampire who puts her on and wears her out.Except for the scenes with Marithé 's parents and sonny's scholarship ,filler which gets in the way,the screenplay is tight ,well- constructed till the trainer's burn out.Afterward ,the movie loses steam :we could expect more madness,more bitterness,and (yes!) more nastiness ;this is finally a predictable happy end of sorts;we would like to be surprised and we are given a bourgeois denouement.Watch it anyway :there are too many good scenes in it ! Let's hope talented Mrs Le Ny will see it through his next effort.

Most English speakers are doubly disadvantaged when they watch French films. We don't understand the language, and we haven't had a strict French education, which ensures that most of the audience has been forced to get familiar with writers like Molière, la Fontaine, Beaumarchais, and Marivaux: all masters of a kind of dry, tart, ironic comedy we just don't have in English. 'The Chef's Wife' (the French title, which means 'We almost got to be friends,' is really on the mark) is in the main line of this tradition. In a small but upscale country town, the wife of the chef at a fancy Michelin-starred restaurant is suffering mid-life career anxiety. She goes to a harried, fretful but dedicated occupational counselor for advice. So far so good; but both women are suffering from severe delusions about their real problems: the wife is an all-devouring co-dependent, the counselor (a divorcée) thinks she's a just-the-facts person, immune from emotional entanglements. Their collision, two black holes of need spiraling inward on each other, is the comic spine of the movie. At the focus of their orbits is the chef himself, a warm but uncommunicative man, who expresses his love in hors d'oeuvres and amuse-bouches, not in words.The two women, played by veteran comédiennes with scores of films between them but working together for the first time, are utterly superb. The chef, played by an actor more usually seen with a pistol in his hand than a saucepan, is an ideal figure to engender deceptive fantasies. The rest of the cast, drawn from the seemingly bottomless well of superb French character actors, supports the principals with high honors. And the script, by actor/director Ann le Ny, is a sleek unobtrusive machine for producing awkward encounters and comic misunderstandings. This is French cinema with an accent aïgu: funny, even farcical, but never, never dumb.

The cast made this seem like a good proposition. I try to watch anything with Roschdy Zem on principle. Production values are handsome - nice titles, sharp bright colours, unfamiliar settings and personable players. I settled back for an agreeable couple of hours at the movies but as this one ran it became more and more irritating.Divorced Viard is a Skills Assessment officer handling a batch of new unemployeds from the local My Toy factory. Uneasy among them is Devos, who turns out to be the co owner with husband Roschdy of the out of town Moulin Blanc epicure restaurant. The two women involve each other in webs of deceit which are embarrassing rather than funny, involving or plausible. Devos and Zem are pretty much indestructible but all the good living fantasy they are involved in is unworthy of them.