Hors de prix (2006)
Directed by Pierre Salvadori

Film Review

After notching up a moderate success with Après vous (2003) Pierre Salvadori continued in the same vein, serving up a similar light romantic comedy with broad appeal to Gallic and Anglophone audiences alike.  An enjoyably kittenish variation on a familiar love-beats-money theme, Hors de prix (a.k.a. Priceless) lacks the punch of the writer-director's earlier satirical offerings, Cible émouvante (1993) and Les Apprentis (1995), but it makes up for this by its sheer charm and good-natured sense of fun.

With its velvet-lined anti-materialist subtext, charismatic leads and slightly over-rich surfeit of surface gloss, this feels like an overly respectful homage to the American comedy of a much earlier decade.  It may lack the sophistication of Preston Sturges' similarly themed The Lady Eve (1941) but it compares favourably with the Blake Edwards' classic Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), with which it has much in common (not least a stunning  doe-eyed lead actress with the same first name).

With Salvadori's writing having little of its erstwhile anarchic flair and originality, the only thing that prevents Hors de prix from being a mundane sixties throwback is the very welcome presence of Gad Elmaleh and Audrey Tautou.  As the film's glamorous leads, these two make as respectable a romantic pairing as you can hope to find in any classic Hollywood rom-com.  With more than a passing resemblance to a young James Stewart, Elmaleh is particularly well suited to play the Forrest Gump-like barman lured into the role of gigolo to predatory older women, his twitchy body gestures and facial expressions containing far more humour and character detail than the scripted dialogue.

Elmaleh's participation in the film offers little that we have not already seen before - indeed his character is a virtual carbon copy of the one he played in Francis Veber's La Doublure (2006) - but the actor's natural hangdog persona makes him a highly sympathetic stooge and it's hard not to root for him when he is first fleeced of all he possesses by a surprisingly ruthless Tautou, and then humiliated as a mere plaything by Marie-Christine Adam.
 
As the worldly wise Dior-worshipping gigolette. Audrey Tautou has finally put behind her the waif-like good girl image that Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (2001) has saddled her with for the best part of half a decade.  Now, with a little help from Pierre Salvadori, she appears to be en route to becoming France's own Barbara Stanwyck, a very tasty cocktail of hard-hearted bitch and old-fashioned dewy-eyed romantic.

Hors de prix's main selling point is that it appears tailor-made for its two stars, allowing them to do what they do well whilst giving them both the freedom to try out something new.  Tautou gets to have an all-out flirtation with Bette Davis duplicity (à la Deception) without losing our sympathies and belief that her character is capable of redemption. 

Hors de prix is by no mean Pierre Salvadori's most inspired film to date (he still has to live up to the promise of his innovative early work) but it was an immense box office success, both at home and abroad.  In France, it drew an impressive audience of 2.1 million, a result that may have led the director to cast Audrey Tautou in his next film, De vrais mensonges (2010), a far worthier offering in the feel-good rom-com line.

Film Synopsis

Jean Simon appears content in his lowly subservience as a barman and general dogsbody at a high-end Biarritz hotel catering for the cream of French society.  Late one evening, an attractive young woman named Irène Mercier saunters into his empty bar and, mistaking him for a millionaire playboy, subjects him to a full-on charm offensive against which Jean has no defence.  A year on, Irène returns to the same hotel with her sugar daddy, rich businessman Jacques, and renews her flirtatious affair with Jean.

By now it is apparent to the barman that Irène is nothing more than a money-chasing adventuress, but he cannot help risking his job to keep up the illusion that he is a fabulously wealthy young man.  Irène's hopes that Jacques will marry her and make her financially independent for life come to nothing when the 60-something businessman realises he has been duped.  The discovery that Jean is a virtual pauper is more than Irène can bear, so she promptly checks out of the hotel and heads down to Nice.  Unable to let the object of his desire go out of his life, Jean follows her and spends the last of his modest fortune trying to keep Irène in the manner to which she has grown accustomed.

His resources depleted, Jean heads back to Biarritz hoping to get back his old job - without success.  Before he can leave the hotel, he falls into the clutches of Madeleine, a wealthy patron badly in need of some compliant male company.  When Irène and Jean next meet, the former appears delighted that the ex-barman has followed her in her line of work, using his god-given charms to wheedle luxury gifts out of his well-heeled client.  With Irène's coaching, Jean manages to get Madeleine to buy him an expensive wristwatch, which he subsequently sells to help Irène out financially when her latest sugar daddy deserts her.

A second chance to hook Jacques proves irresistible, so Jean agrees to help Irène in her marital ambitions.  Passing himself off as a superrich captain of industry, Jean seduces Jacques's latest fortune hunting siren, allowing Irène to make her move on Jacques.  Just in time, Irène comes to her senses and realises that true love is more valuable than wealth.  She and Jean leave on a moped - a parting gift from Madeleine - to start a new life without so much as a Euro to their name.