La Belle Personne

Every now and then, I happen to run into a French movie that exactly captures what I don’t like about the French. It’s not the fault of Léa Seydoux, who I was literally looking forward to seeing, but who also turned out quite a disappointment, but rather it was her acting colleague Louis Garrel’s fault. In my opinion, in this movie he portrays a classical character of French cinematography. A cool guy who doesn’t seem to give a damn, very gallant, constantly daydreaming, but at the same time, you feel that there is a piece of genius inside him, which causes considerable arrogance, which young Frenchmen are really famous for. And I have a very big problem trying to get over that. Once Louis Garrel has convinced me that he’s also an excellent actor, I will be happy to apologize to him. By the way, the screenwriter must have been pretty wasted at times. You don’t get to see that kind of dialogues you see here in many movies. Something along the lines of: “Wait, I want to tell you something. – What do you want to tell me? – Well, you see… - What is it you want to tell me? – I don’t know anymore.” (17/11/2015)

Je suis aussi partagé qu’après Chansons d’amour. Christophe Honoré fait décidément de drôles de films ! D'après moi, les principaux points faibles sont le scénario et les personnages qui sont tous quelque peu dérangés émotionnellement, confus et peu naturels dans leurs comportements. Cela dit, grâce à sa BO sublime et quelques scènes délicieusement poétiques, La Belle personne mérite que je lui mette quatre étoiles. (03/02/2010)

It's a coming-of-age film about how hard it is, but it's all delivered in such a starkly depressing way that you can see where it's going. And because the characters aren't particularly great, not even in terms of acting, you won't engage with this film and won't admire it for being realistic and contemporary. Because it's not. (01/05/2017)