Little White Lies is a Gallic hit but can it translate to Canada?
Jean-Luc Godard once said “I pity the French Cinema because it has no money. I pity the American Cinema because it has no ideas.”
The great director’s contention may still be true but Little White Lies certainly puts it to the test. Despite the film’s 154-minute running time it’s rather short on ideas at least ones of any novelty. But it’s been a smash hit at the French box office despite or perhaps because its simple humour sappy storyline and heavy-handed American soundtrack place it closer to Hollywood than to its Gallic counterparts.
At the heart of the film though he’s only on screen for a few minutes is a Parisian party boy named Ludo (Jean Dujardin) who’s badly injured mere minutes in after his scooter collides with a truck one night. Upon learning of the accident his mostly 30-something friends rush to his bedside in the ICU but concluding there’s little they can do for him at this point decide to go ahead with a long-planned vacation on the Atlantic coast.
Although Ludo’s condition casts something of a pall over the holiday his friends are more distracted by their own problems. Vincent (Benoît Magimel) has freaked out his uptight middle-aged pal Max (François Cluzet) who like him is married by revealing he’s attracted to him. Meanwhile singles Marie (Marion Cotillard) Éric (Gilles Lellouche) and Antoine (Laurent Lafitte) are grappling with ill-fated relationships of their own.
These romantic entanglements are often humorous though the chuckles are too few given the film’s length. The scene in which Vincent awkwardly informs Max of his feelings is very funny both for Vincent’s clumsy approach — telling his friend he loves his hands but he is emphatically not gay — and the subsequent paranoia it triggers in Max that the younger man is merely waiting for a chance to pounce on him. The perpetually juvenile Antoine whose idea of wit is a text message telling a woman “I know how you feel inside” is also amusing if not in a terribly sophisticated way.
But even when the characters’ antics are amusing they’re never very involving which is a problem when the laughs hit a dry spell. Éric seems credibly crushed when dumped by his girlfriend Léa (Louise Monot) but it’s hard to know why since like most of the women onscreen she’s largely an afterthought. Marie the film’s only female character of any consequence is likable but underdeveloped. An intriguing early scene suggests she’s bisexual but is never referenced again and she remains something of a cypher throughout.
This is more likely the result of carelessness than design in a film that’s hardly subtle. The scene in which Marie calls Ludo in the hospital is meant to be poignant but seems more comical when she asks if he can hear her and a voice promptly sings: “Oh Lord can you hear me?” It’s also hard to imagine more cliched background music for a funeral than “My Way” and even when the songs are less grating they’re still played too often and too loud.
All of this might be worth enduring if it seemed to be going somewhere but the only real “suspense” offered is if and how Vincent and Max will resolve their tiff. Perhaps the resolution when it finally comes is heartening but it’s also anti-climatic something that applies to the film as a whole.
The flaws of Little White Lies are run-of-the-mill for Hollywood and if that was its place of origin none of them would seem particularly striking. French cinema however is generally held to a higher standard. It’s a pity this film doesn’t live up to it.
