Little White Lies is the newest film written and directed by Guillaume Canet, starring Marion Cotillard, Benoît Magimel, François Cluzet, Gilles Lellouche and Jean Dujardin.

Plot:
Ludo (Jean Dujardin) is the center of a very diverse group of friends. When he has an accident, his friends decide to still go ahead with the trip they have planned together. But the tensions within the group keep rising: Vincent (Benoît Magimel) tells Max (François Cluzet) that he is in love with him, despite both of them being straight and married. Marie (Marion Cotillard) tumbles from one bed partner to another, while her best friend Éric (Gilles Lellouche) is trying very hard to convince himself that he wants the relationship he has with his girlfriend. With all their various problems and troubles, do their friendships have a chance of surviving?

I very much enjoyed Little White Lies. It could have gone the way of so many “friends breaking apart” movies and just be overly dramatic, but it shows restraint in the right places (mostly), is character-driven  and just all around nice.

The cast is pretty damn amazing in this film. You’d expect no less from Marion Cotillard who really lights up every film she so much as vaguely looks at and I also very much like Benoît Magimel whom I see much to little of. But really, Jean Dujardin steals the film away whenever he is on screen. Talk about a charismatic presence.

They have strong characters to work with, which always helps. The only character that really doesn’t work for me is Antoine (Laurent Lafitte). I mean, I get that there are guys like that but I just couldn’t bring myself to root for him in any way, shape or form. Which makes his ending kinda annoying.

I had never seen any of Guillaume Canet’s movies before (I mean the ones he directed and wrote, not the ones he acted in) and I was pretty impressed by him. He has a good sense of pacing and you really don’t feel the movies length (which at over 2 hours is not short).

But his writing is even better than his directing. The movie is perfectly character-driven with just the right amount of drama and a good sense of humor. I really didn’t think I would like it as much as I did – and I’m really happy that it worked out that way.

Summarising: Recommended.