Little White Lies

Film (2010)

With François Cluzet (Max Cantara), Marion Cotillard (Marie), Benoît Magimel (Vincent Ribaud), Gilles Lellouche (Éric), Jean Dujardin (Ludo), Laurent Lafitte (Antoine), Valérie Bonneton (Véronique Cantara), Pascale Arbillot (Isabelle Ribaud), Joël Dupuch (Jean-Louis), Anne Marivin (Juliette), Louise Monot (Léa), Hocine Mérabet (Nassim), Mathieu Chedid (Raphaël), Maxim Nucci (Franck), Néo Broca (Elliot), Marc Mairé (Arthur), Jeanne Dupuch (Jeanne), Mado Mérabet (Brigitte)

Among a group of middle-aged Parisian friends, one has a difficult encounter which casts a shadow on the group. In retreat, the rest of the group perseveres in its togetherness, trying to work out the many details of its internal relationships.

I will not give away the plot here, but suffice it to say that this group of handsome and beautiful middle aged French actors frolicking by the sea makes for a couple of hours or so of interesting viewing.

The film itself is quite rambling and uneconomical, and, at a certain point when the darn thing just would not quit, I had to start consulting my watch.

The relationship issues it raises often seem put forth in a limited and not very satisfying way. So, when unexpected and somewhat illicit affections surface, the film does not work with them to bring out interesting aspects of character, but belabors their effects in one-dimensional emotional space.

Marion Cotillard, who plays Marie, has never looked more radiant. I first saw her as Édith Piaf in La Vie En Rose (2007), and do a superb job embodying the physical being of that fragile, vulnerable and compelling, but not highly alluring, persona. Here, however, her unbound and radiant beauty is most evident, and she is also quite effective in an emotionally complicated role.

Jean Dujardin, of fame from his leading role in The Artist (2011), plays the complicated role of Ludo. I would not have recognized him had the film credits not made it clear. His role is not huge, but his winning smile and charm, so well known from The Artist, also work their magic here.

This film indeed shows so many similarities to Lawrence Kasdan’s film, The Big Chill (1983), it is hard to believe that it was not explicitly modeled after it.

In The Big Chill, friends convene around the death of one of their own. What ensues among the gathered is a function of their being together in this difficult circumstance.

Here, in Little White Lies, the characters escape to the seaside under less than believable circumstances where they try to work out the details of their relationships. This is a fundamental narrative weakness of the film and it reduces its potential effect.

Though the characters here are beautiful to watch, that is not enough to rescue this tale from the overall feeling of endless absentee meandering it conveys inadvertently.

– BADMan