Get smart: watch something else


Détrompez-Vous is a polished, sanitized French romantic comedy with François Cluzet and Alice Taglioni as Lionel and Lisa; Roschdy Zem and Mathilde Sagnier as Thomas and Carole--two couples with interlocking fidelity issues. A certain gloss of American influence is evident in the indistinguishably comfortable apartments and nice clothes supplied to everyyone involved. Model-pretty Alice Taglioni is granted a Diane Keaton-esquire cute frumpiness (Annie Hall vintage), while M. Cluzot has an unmistakable Dustin Hoffman look. Taglioni is a children's book illustrator, Cluzot a gynecologist she visits. Détromper means get smart (or "undecieve") and Cluzot and Taglioni are the ones who wise up (sort of) after they learn Saginer and Zem, their respective mates, are involved in a hot affair. The question arises: is this sort of situation ripe material for comedy? Zem and Taglioni have a little girl and the other couple a little boy, which makes for a cute finale, after a series of episodes that are on the whole more ingenious than amusing. Zem's an engineer-architect; Sagnier seems to specialize in home-wrecking.

Avoiding any confrontation, the "undeceived" pair try surreptitiously to block their respective spouses' affair. The Diane Keaton stand-in takes to satisfying Zem orally before he goes out so he can't perform with the home-wrecker, and so on. Eventually Lionel and Lisa say, What the hell? If Thomas and Carole want to get it on, let them. Only the misused ones stage one last romantic holiday trip with their cheating spouses--by accident, wouldn't you know, at the very same rocky watering place--and this derails the affairs and the couples get back together to their original positions. Bourgeois stability is restored and nothing transgressive--or ultimately very funny--has happened.

The French press was not generous with this bauble. As one review pointed out, if the two betrayed spouses had simply confronted their mates about the infidelity, they'd never gotten involved in a series of time-wasting and twisted preventive measures--but there would have been no film. The bright look of the film and the smooth acting make our ninety minutes less painful than they might have been, but do little to engender sympathy for the characters or their machinations. A waste of everybody's time.

Seen in Paris October 28, 2007 at the UGC Danton.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.