Je vous trouve très beau (2005) Directed by Isabelle Mergault
Comedy / Drama / Romance
aka: You Are So Beautiful
Film Review
Actress and writer Isabelle Mergault made her directorial debut with
this flimsy but engaging comedy-drama. Despite a respectable
performance from Michel Blanc, an actor with an unrivalled talent for
conveying the poignancy of solitude, the film scores pretty low on the
sincerity scale, thanks to the frequent outbursts of premeditated
schmaltz. On the plus side, Mergault has a genuine talent for
black comedy and some of the her twisted black humour helps to take the
edge off the saccharine-coated plot and cliché-heavy
characterisation. Unfortunately, the whole thing falls apart
spectacularly in the last five minutes as the mother of all Deus Ex Machinas in flung at the
audience with the ferocity of a force nine gale and a deluge of weepy
sentimentality comes down and cruelly washes away the film's few redeeming features.
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Film Synopsis
When his wife dies in a terrible accident, farmer Aymé Pigrenet
soon discovers he needs a replacement. It isn't so much affection
that he craves but someone who can take on the thousand-and-one jobs
that his wife did and for which he is manifestly ill-equipped - complex,
highly specialised
tasks such as operating the washing machine without drowning his
cat. Not one for socialising, Aymé resorts to a
marriage agency and ends up going to Rumania to find his new help
mate. There he finds a host of young women who are eager to be
his wife so that they can start a new, more prosperous, life in France,
making a useful contribution to French society as actors, singers and
dancers. The one he selects is Elena, the only one who expresses
an interest in working on his farm. At first, things start
out well enough, but Aymé's coldness quickly upsets Elena and
she soon begins to regret leaving behind her old life, and her young
daughter...
A wave of fresh talent in the late 1950s, early 1960s brought about a dramatic renaissance in French cinema, placing the auteur at the core of France's 7th art.
Continental Films, quality cinema under the Nazi Occupation
At the time of the Nazi Occupation of France during WWII, the German-run company Continental produced some of the finest films made in France in the 1940s.