Heartbreaker
Excellent pacing, fine set pieces, a few good jokes and a couple of beguiling performances left me, eventually, shamefully, seduced.

Pascal Chaumeil’s debut feature calls for an addendum to the inventory of French superiority over the English. Alongside charm, sophistication, elegance, fashion, food, poetry, art, and bedroom skills, now find: well made, unashamedly commercial romantic-comedies.

Heartbreaker exhibits a derivative concept, a predictable arc and a straightforward execution that somehow amounts to a film that, in its better moments, is exotic, glamorous, engaging and funny. If it had been British it would’ve been a mess. But it’s not. It’s French, and it’s got Vanessa Paradis and Romain Duris in it.

Duris as Alex Lippi is an expert relationship wrecker and master of seduction. An opening romantic vignette leads into a montage of his professional triumphs to introduce his family run ‘Couples Break-Up’ service.  Alex is the irresistible con at the front of their work while sister and brother in law are occasional supporting actors who manage surveillance and technical wizardry. They’re a formidable unit and Alex has never failed to turn a husband, fiancé or boyfriend into an ex.

Oceans 11 style missions with meticulous planning, staging and execution are shot through with that polished, fast-cut energy of a slick thriller. There’s a fair amount of genre parody to follow and the script is witty enough to get away with mocking rom-coms, in a rom-com.

The globe-trotting trio struggle to find contracts and the lull in work is badly timed for Alex as unsavoury figures emerge demanding that a mysterious and sizeable debt is settled. The romance element is then patiently set up as salvation arrives in the shape of a big job that will pay Alex out of trouble. Paradis as the cultured and independent heiress Juliette is about to marry kindly, smart, rich, English dullard Jonathan (Andrew Lincoln). Her father will have none of it and enlists Alex and co. to thwart their impending wedding. Luckily, they locate her sans fiancé in the French Riviera. Less luckily: they have ten days.

What follows is an action-packed, Monaco set, ill-starred, farcical and convoluted courting of Juliette. The film becomes an appealing melange that in one significant respect recalls dirge like Failure to Launch and How to Lose a Guy in 10 days. There is intrigue in the foreign context for what feels like a very Hollywood movie and the absence of that prat McConaughey in the Matthew McConaughey role is a tremendous reprieve.

I realised a few minutes in that an acquaintance with Duris’ acclaimed CV didn’t make for the redundant distraction I’d expected. The film is actually more effective if you’re familiar with both Paradis (Mrs. Johnny Depp, a celebrated actress and former child pop star) and Duris (suave as sex prolific star of French cinema). If you can forgive the ugly cerebralism, it allows a nice line in meta-cinematic irony that indulges and teases modern celebrity obsession. The joke on a good number of occasions is funnier for the two leads being who they are. When Juliette discreetly mimes Wham! out of the car window, or Alex studies the steps to a Dirty Dancing number in his bedroom, it’s funnier than it should be. A good bit of the funny comes from Juliette and Alex being incarnated as two luminaries of French pop culture. It’s a trick that the Coens played to good effect in Burn After Reading. If it was intended, Chaumeil handles the conceit just as cleverly as they did.

Aside from Andrew Lincoln’s appearance as 2D Posh Englishman™ the casting is impeccably well judged. Julie Ferrier as Alex’s sister and business partner is able to parade an impressive comic range and Francois Damiens as her neanderthal husband Marc does a few lovely shades of goof. Paradis, the female lead, as human but detached heiress Juliette has a delicate, gamine beauty and sang-froid that is an ideal fit. She plays the role with the right amount of poise and reserve to keep it just about believable that George Michael and Patrick Swayze could have a little, camp corner of her heart.

One glaring problem appears however, in the shape of Helena Noguerra as Juliette’s nymphomaniac friend Sophie. She is loud, provocative and flirtatious to the point of intimidation. Appearing late on Noguerra’s is such a luminous cameo that she casts a shadow over Juliette and brings into stark relief the grey inevitability of the films close.

Slightly fudged female dynamics aside, Heartbreaker is Duris’ film. It lives or dies on his performance, and the man delivers. He has so many spades of charm that you suspect he has spare charm spades along with countless buckets of charm in a giant charm-shed in his extensive Parisian charm-garden. Heartbreaker will not win awards but even in as flimsy a film as this, he adds weight to mounting evidence that he is a Proper Film Star.

Heartbreaker’s sins (a recycled concept, a mediocrity of imaginative touches, and a final act that is frankly banal) are the kinds of flaws that offer a solid basis for a real critical mauling. Duris’ involvement had me expecting something more unusual, but for all the appeal of the production’s glossy allure, knowingly cheesy soundtrack, occasional wit and decent slapstick, the whole is a bit lazy and generic.

To make a full and candid confession though, I found it possible to forgive all of that and, to be perfectly honest, I enjoyed it. Excellent pacing, fine set pieces, a few good jokes and a couple of beguiling performances left me, eventually, shamefully, seduced.