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Beautiful Lies
| Released |
19 August 2011 |
| Director |
Pierre Salvadori |
Starring
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Audrey Tautou, Nathalie Baye, Sami Bouajila, Stephanie Lagarde, Judith Chemla |
| Writer(s) |
Benoit Graffin, Pierre Salvadori |
| Producer(s) |
Philippe Eidel |
| Origin |
France |
| Running Time |
105 minutes |
| Genre |
Comedy, romance |
| Rating |
12A |
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The ugly truth.
In Beautiful Lies, Audrey Tautou, famous for her breakthrough role as Amelie, moves slightly up the alphabet to play salon-owner Emilie. The similarities between the two characters begin and end with their names. Though Tautou looks as charming as ever on screen, she plays a character who will fire an employee simply because she is intimidated by his education; wants her mother to move on with her life but hurtfully criticises her struggle to do so and displays little concern for the feelings of those around her. In short, she’s a bit of a cow.
We don’t realise this straight away; in fact Beautiful Lies literally begins by looking at Emilie through rose-coloured glass from the point of view of besotted maintenance man Jean (Sami Bouajila). As he gazes at the object of his affections while replacing some broken stained glass, his voiceover narrates the anonymous love letter he has composed for her (a letter Emilie will later dismiss as being outdated). To see the romantic comedy from the point of view of the male protagonist is a fairly unusual tactic and provides a promising start; if it had been maintained, Beautiful Lies would have been a much more interesting and likable movie. Jean is, after all, the most sympathetic character in the piece and Bouajila gives the most rounded performance. Unfortunately, writer/director Pierre Salvadori (Priceless) shifts the focus to Emilie and her mother Maddy (Nathalie Baye), one of the most toxic mother/daughter pairings ever committed to celluloid.
Keen to encourage Maddy to stop pining for her ex-husband, Emilie copies the aforementioned love letter and sends it to her. Maddy is initially buoyed up by the attention but Emilie’s plan quickly spirals out of control and Jean finds himself caught between the two women. It is a concept that aims to be fun and frothy but it misses the mark by a long way, actually becoming more and more sinister. Throughout the film, Emilie horribly misuses the people around her and it’s hard to understand why the intelligent Jean still harbours feelings of love after her frequent displays of callousness. Add to this an extremely creepy third act and what we are left with is a piece of fiction that is far from beautiful.
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Linda O’Brien |
