This is not an un-entertaining French thriller (which isn't QUITE the same thing as being an entertaining French thriller). The story involves a beautiful pick-pocket (Virginie Ledoyen) who steals the wallet from the coat of a lawyer (Michael Lavin) while she and a Moroccan friend are crashing an art party that happens to be for the lawyer's wife (Carole Bouquet). Later she and her friend are unable to pay their rent and decide to hold up a jewelry store with a toy gun. Naturally, this plan goes horribly awry and the pick-pocket finds herself in need of a lawyer, so she calls the guy whose wallet she stole (she didn't have a phone book, I guess). She has no money, but he he agrees to take the case pro boner--er, pro bono--after she shows him her panties. The movie gets pretty predictable for awhile (Will he get her off? Will she get him off?). But there are a few interesting twists in store, some involving a young bartender (Guillame Canet)who perjures himself to give Ledoyen's character an alibi and is very jealous of her relationship with the lawyer.
French movies and Hollywood movies are very different, but one thing they have in common is that they always cast the most beautiful people in the world, even if it sometimes threatens the plausibility of the whole story. It's hard to believe a girl that looks like Ledoyen would ever have to pay her own rent, and if she needed money all she would have to do to is ask just about any guy and he'd gladly give it to her with just the vaguest hope of sex sometime in the indeterminate future. The actress playing the wife meanwhile, Carole Bouquet, is a former Bond girl and ex-wife of Gerard Depardieu. Of course, that doesn't mean her husband wouldn't possibly cheat on her, but it's hard to have much sympathy for him when he does. (If you're unfamiliar with these French actresses, imagine a guy married to an older woman who looks like Sela Ward having an affair with a more voluptuous version of Natalie Portman). Even Guillame Canet, while it's not hard to imagine him being obsessed with Ledoyen, would certainly have A LOT of other female prospects.
That's not to say, necessarily, the acting isn't good. Lavin and Bouquet are quite good. Ledoyen is probably the least talented of her generation of French actresses--Ludivine Sagnier, Isilde Lebesco, Marie Gillain, Roxane Mesquida, Vahina Giocante--but she is certainly not a bad actress by any means, and she is probably the most famous outside of France thanks to her appearance as Leonardo DeCaprio's love interest in "The Beach". Canet, meanwhile, was also in "The Beach", but I haven't seen him much since then. This movie is implausible at times and predictable at others. It won't change your life, but I'm sure you won't regret having watched it either.
French movies and Hollywood movies are very different, but one thing they have in common is that they always cast the most beautiful people in the world, even if it sometimes threatens the plausibility of the whole story. It's hard to believe a girl that looks like Ledoyen would ever have to pay her own rent, and if she needed money all she would have to do to is ask just about any guy and he'd gladly give it to her with just the vaguest hope of sex sometime in the indeterminate future. The actress playing the wife meanwhile, Carole Bouquet, is a former Bond girl and ex-wife of Gerard Depardieu. Of course, that doesn't mean her husband wouldn't possibly cheat on her, but it's hard to have much sympathy for him when he does. (If you're unfamiliar with these French actresses, imagine a guy married to an older woman who looks like Sela Ward having an affair with a more voluptuous version of Natalie Portman). Even Guillame Canet, while it's not hard to imagine him being obsessed with Ledoyen, would certainly have A LOT of other female prospects.
That's not to say, necessarily, the acting isn't good. Lavin and Bouquet are quite good. Ledoyen is probably the least talented of her generation of French actresses--Ludivine Sagnier, Isilde Lebesco, Marie Gillain, Roxane Mesquida, Vahina Giocante--but she is certainly not a bad actress by any means, and she is probably the most famous outside of France thanks to her appearance as Leonardo DeCaprio's love interest in "The Beach". Canet, meanwhile, was also in "The Beach", but I haven't seen him much since then. This movie is implausible at times and predictable at others. It won't change your life, but I'm sure you won't regret having watched it either.