Search - The Girl from Monaco on DVD

Lusty female ambition using sex meets middle-aged male hormo

C. O. DeRiemer | San Antonio, Texas, USA | 08/13/2009

(3 out of 5 stars)

"For those with multiple personalities, The Girl from Monaco (La Fille de Monaco, directed by Anne Fontaine), could possibly do more good than therapy.

Is it a light romantic comedy of a middle-aged lawyer's ego and the uninhibited sexual spirit of a ditzy television weather girl, combined with a trial for murder and hints of the Russian mafia? Is it a male melodrama of irony and rue where a middle-aged lawyer's gonads lead him into humiliating situations that are at once humorous and embarrassing, and where an erotic and selfish female weather reader is manipulating his hormones? Is it a sad set of experiences where lust and manipulation lead to unexpected but justifiable justice, only leavened by the sense that certain actions were well-served and that the protagonists understand, finally, their behavior?

In other words, The Girl from Monaco is a movie with, at times, great charm and amusement, but which falls on its face because the director cannot make up her mind what she wants her movie to be about. With each shift into the next line of the story, we can't help but finally realize that the line we just left is something we'd rather stay with. Fontaine isn't deliberately leading us on, in my opinion, but she seems to keep changing her idea of the house she's building after construction has started.

Bertrand Beauvois (Fabrice Luchini) has traveled from Paris to Monaco to defend a woman charged with murdering a man she may or may not have been having an affair with. Beauvois is a top lawyer who wins his cases but seems to have less luck with women. He's a whiz with words, though. Because the murdered man was a Russian with Russian mafia connections, Beauvois is assigned protection, Christophe Abadi (Roschdy Zem). He's a tall, lean, taciturn man who insists on doing his job. When Beauvois, a pale, unimpressive-looking man with a modest sense of humor along with a sense of his own importance, meets Audrey Varelia (Louise Bourgoin), the ditzy, uninhibited weather reader, we can see speculation move to lust with all the single-minded drive of a teen-ager looking at a Playboy centerfold. What we also see is Christophe's disapproval...and we see Audrey's uninhibited, free-spirited ways with her body that completely capture this little lawyer. Trust me, this all is played for amusement centering on the fragile egos of middle-aged men who actually believe gorgeous young women may fall for them. When we see what a collection of partying freeloaders Audrey runs with, the movie starts making us uneasy. When we see how casually manipulative Audrey can be, using her erotic charms to capture poor Bertrand by his hormones, it's hard not to smile...and be uneasy. All the while the silent and serious Christophe tries to keep Bertrand ready for the trial each day. As Christophe does his job, it turns out he might have a bit of history with Audrey. She seems to have known, in exactly the Biblical sense, just about every man she's ever met.

What can I say? Bertrand gets his. Christophe gets his. Audrey gets hers. I'm not talking death. Necessarily. And I'm not talking about grim irony. It's just that a movie, even one with all the finely nuanced amusement of the first third of this one, that ends with the audience likely giving a shrug hasn't, in my opinion, been able to hold itself together.

Fabrice Luchini is excellent. Roschdy Zem is impressive. And blond, built Louise Bourgoin, in her first movie, managed to keep me lusting after her even when the last thing I knew I'd want would be to find myself in Bertrand Beauvois's shoes. The movie isn't a mess by any means. It just doesn't know what it wants to be."

It is interesting

T.L.Walker | Fayetteville, GA. | 04/28/2010

(3 out of 5 stars)

"I saw ads for this on youtube and decided to get it. It is at its advertised; a lawyer working on a case in monaco meets this attractive nympho who is a weathergirl and gets involved with her. It kept my interest and I was interested but it did not knock my socks off. I will not give away the ending but it was subtle and a letdown. I had wanted a more conventional ending than the one this movie has. If you like light comedies/romances you might like this."