Un baiser s’il vous plaît is a French film by author/director/actor Emmanuel Mouret, starring Virginie Ledoyen and himself. It’s a nice, light film with a couple of laughs, but a little too much “I’m going to be deep now”-talking.

The plot is quickly told: Émilie (Julie Gayet) meets Gabriel (Michael Cohen) on a business trip. Although they both are in happy relationships, they feel attracted to each other and go on a date. When Gabriel wants to kiss Émilie at the end of the evening, Émilie tells him the story of two friends – Judith (Virginie Ledoyen) and Nicolas (Emmanuel Mouret). Judith and Nicolas were best friends, both in relationships as well. But after Nicolas breaks up with his girlfriend, he comes to Judith for some sexual release – and things get complicated.

[Minor SPOILER Warning]

Emmanuel Mouret has been compared to Woody Allen and I think that’s a very true comparison for once. There’s a whole lot of talking in the movie, the characters are quirky and motivation is disregarded to provide for a good story. Which can all be very good – and also is – as long as you don’t think too much about it.

The script was genuinely funny at times – especially the scenes before and after Judith and Nicolas sleep with each other for the first time and it’s so good that they have to do it again to show each other that it didn’t mean anything and wasn’t that good. So, they fuck again and again it’s just great and they apologise to each other for it.
Other times it seemed awfully contrived. Quirk for quirk’s sake. That two basically intelligent characters like Judith and Nicolas could get in such a mess was unrealistic to say the least. Plus, I really didn’t understand why Judith would sleep with Nicolas in the first place.

Also, the solution for Émilie and Gabriel seemed very artificial and not like something that would actually happen and/or work in real life.

Virginie Ledoyen looks so much like Natalie Portman, don’t you think?

But apart from these issues, it was nice entertainment. I don’t need to see it again and I wouldn’t spend money on it, but if it’s on TV, it can make for a nice evening.