A French rom-com to charm or irritate, starring the whimsical Audrey Tautou as a hairdresser at a seaside town.
Her mother (Nathalie Baye) is depressed about the fact that her husband has left her for a younger woman, now pregnant. The salon's handsome handyman, strangely a refugee from Harvard, fancies Tautou but is too shy to do anything but send her an anonymous love letter which she sends to her mother to cheer her up. The beautiful lie causes terrible trouble, and so on and so forth.
Pierre Salvadori's film concentrates lovingly on Tautou but should have looked more carefully at Baye, the best thing in the film as an ever-hopeful divorcée. The whole is winsome in the extreme and a bit chauvinist too.
Beautiful Lies (De Vrais Mensonges)
Cert: 12A
