Starring: Pierre Richard, Yaniss Lespert, Fanny Valette, Stephane all Bissot, Stephanie Crayencourt, Gustave Kerven, Macha Merill
Distributor: Rialto Films
Runtime: 99 mins. Reviewed in Jul 2018
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The English title for this French film, a romantic comedy with a touch of farce, is certainly more direct. Mr Stein does go online. However, there is a Gallic subtlety in the French title (One profile for two) – one online dating identity profile but with reference to 2 men.
In recent years, there have been quite a number of comedies incorporating online dating, the comedy of odd couples meeting, the clashes of incompatibles, deceptions. While this is a case of deception, it is done with a light touch even though, theoretically, there is something a bit creepy about the premise.
Mr Stein, Pierre, is played by the celebrated veteran comic actor, Pierre Richard, whose heyday was in the 1970s and 1980s, The Tall Blond Man with the One Red Shoe… There was no such thing as online dating in his time, but he enters into the spirit of the film, making it at age 82.
However, this is the story also of Alex (Yaniss Lespert), a writer who has published a short story, rather forlorn in his outlook on life, downcast look, who rescues a young woman, Juliette, who is sick in the street and drives her home on her motorbike. He would like a kiss but she is in a relationship with a businessman who is about to go to China (which she is not enthusiastic about).
Three months later, they are a couple, but he has no income although he has interviewed a producer who wants him to write some pitches for blood and gore stories. But the couple is living with Juliette’s mother who often visits her father, Pierre, giving him her computer to give him something to do because he has been stuck, allegedly agoraphobic, in his apartment since his wife of many decades died two years earlier, re-watching her on his home movies. She has the brainwave that Alex, but not revealing that he is Juliette’s boyfriend, should give him computer lessons.
Alex does. Pierre pays him. Begins to call on him for further help. Pierre is fascinated by the computer, going online, discovering dating, the audience sharing a collage of various women who respond to him, but then discovering the ideal woman, a physiotherapist called Flora who happens to live in Brussels.
How to handle the relationship? Fortunately, French literature provides a model from olden days, Cyrano de Bergerac. Pierre writes the messages. Alex goes to meet Flora. As we all expected, Alex is attracted to Flora, she to him (although initially to Pierre’s stories). Alex has to do a fair amount of inventing, but begins a relationship with Flora, the two men travelling to Brussels to meet her.
The resolution could be very serious – and, in an underlying manner, it is. This is where the touches of farce enter in, Juliette and her mother encountering Flora and misinterpreting her relationship with Pierre. Alex appears and Juliette is upset with him (although she is still attached to her boyfriend who, in fact, does return from China to look her up).
Another visit to Brussels, some truth-telling, the relationship working out as expected (and as we would like) and a pleasant little online trick played on Pierre for a happy ending all round.
Peter Malone MSC is an Associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting.
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