[DELICACY opens in Cleveland on Friday June 1st exclusively at the Capitol Theatre.]
Review by Matt Finley
David and Stéphane Foenkinos’ first
feature, DELICACY (La Délicatesse), is French,
stars Audrey Tautou and bears the tagline, “a new romantic comedy
about Love, Fate and other delicacies.” In other words, the
expectation of a quirky, artful AMÉLIE knockoff would be
reasonable. It would also be a gross over-estimation. Part romantic
farce and part workplace comedy, the film is airy and big-hearted,
with enough Parisian flavor and European presence to satisfy
film-going Francophiles, but that’s about as far as it goes.
Were it not for the unforeseen
intervention of a careless motorist, DELICACY could have been
the shortest romantic comedy ever. As it stands, shortly into
domestic bliss, an anonymous lead-foot squashes protagonist Natalie’s
(Tautou) true love and husband, Francois (Pio Marmaï). One “Three
Years Later” later, Natalie’s a high-paid executive who has
channeled her grief into her occupation, and remains alone save for
constant unwanted advances from her manipulative boss, Charles (Bruno
Todeschini). When she’s put in charge of her own staff, however,
she meets an unlikely love interest – a paunchy, balding Swede
named Markus (François Damiens).
It’s hard to pin down exactly what
writer/co-director David Foenkinos is trying to say, other than that
love can be found at unexpected times and in the most gap-toothed of
places. A consummate professional and experienced widow, Natalie
isn’t expecting to find a lover - certainly not one twice her
weight who reports to her. Meanwhile, Markus, a self-effacing
bachelor with neither delusions nor shame about his unremarkable
physique, seems so accustomed to rejection that he’d just as soon
abandon the relationship early on lest it fall apart on its own for
reasons beyond his control.
One of the more frustrating aspects of
the film is its sustained lack of engagement with Natalie’s grief.
There’s a hearty 15-minute chunk at the start showing her and
Francois in action, meeting and wedding and enjoying their
lives together, but then, after leaping three whole years ahead, we
meet a Natalie who’s absorbed with her work, but otherwise
emotionally functional. If the movie has larger ideas about human
resilience or the transmutability of love, they’re obscured by the
office chatter and Markus’ self-defeatist moping Of all the
obstacles standing between ultimate happiness with the Swede –
their work situation, the jealous boss, her superficial friends and
Markus’ persistent hangdog emo-tude – her street pizza’ed hubby
seems to have the least defined influence (except, of course, during
a couple volatile emotional scenes where his name is surreptitiously
dropped almost, it seems, to simply wrench one-more turn from the
tuning pegs of the audience’s heartstrings).
I can see how perhaps the early
portrayal of Natalie and Francois as a couple aids in helping us see
Natalie at her best – to reveal her true potential for happiness
and supply weight to the lingering ghost that may (or may not) be
contributing to ger romantic reticence – but the narrative distance
the film puts between Natalie’s tragedy and her unlikely and
humorously tumultuous office romance makes the entire widow storyline
feel like simple artificial drama - a stone of false pathos tied to
an otherwise frothy and wholly serviceable romantic comedy.
Speaking of serviceable rom-coms,
DELICACY also does that thing where it relies almost solely on
the attractiveness and popularity of the actress to justify the
desirability of her character. There are three men in the film who
fall in love Natalie, and yet, even at her most bubbly and relaxed,
there’s nothing remarkable about her other than that she’s Audrey
Tautou. Not that Markus is particularly enchanting or anything...
I really don’t mean to knock the film
so hard. It’s effusively lighthearted, stubbornly straightforward
and barely earns its PG-13 rating, making it a great option for
families or couples looking for an easygoing comfort flick with a
cultural edge. DELICACY is cute, but unfocused and
over-extended, a film so eager to express sweeping emotional
poignancy, it breezes past the subtle beauty that better films manage
find in the everyday. (2 out of 4 Stars)
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