De vrais mensonges
Director: Pierre Salvadori
Writer: Pierre Salvadori, Benoît Graffin
Cast: Audrey Tautou, Nathalie Baye, Sami Bouajila, Stéphanie Lagarde, Judith Chemla

Plot:
Hairdresser Émilie (Audrey Tautou) worries about her mother Maddy (Nathalie Baye): it has been four years since her husband left her for somebody else, but Maddy still refuses to move on, despite all the effort on Émilie’s side to force her to. But then Émilie receives an anonymous love letter. Not knowing that it’s from her employee Jean (Sami Bouajila), she decides to send it on to her mother and maybe get some more life into her that way. But that’s only the start of a whole new set of problems.

De vrais mensonges starts off pretty nicely but with every further decision the characters in this movie take, I just started hating them a little more. And a little more. And then some. Which only makes this movie feel absolutely frustrating.

When the movie started I really thought that it would go quite nicely. I like Audrey Tautou and the way the hairdressers and Jean are introduced seemed at least promising. Plus, I really liked the set-design – it seemed the perfect mix of romance and playfulness to go with this kind of film.

But then unfortunately the characters start to act and they start making one weird, moronic decision after the other, turning them into ever increasingly bigger assholes. In the end I wanted to slap all of them around a little bit – except Sylvia (Stéphanie Lagarde) and Paulette (Judith Chemla) who were the only ones who still had some sympathy points in my book.

But even with that the film still might have worked if I had managed to believe its plot. But seriously, people, no. This movie didn’t even try to make us see why Jean and Émilie would like each other. In fact they do everything to show us that they don’t like each other and then we should cheer them on to end up together? It really does not work that way.

At least there was Nathalie Baye. I mean, she is stuck with a crappy part that doesn’t take her seriously, but she’s nevertheless great with it. It just isn’t enough.

Summarising: You can give it a miss.