Beautiful Lies
Starring: Audrey Tautou, Nathalie Baye, Sami Bouajila
Director: Pierre Salvadori
Rating: 3/5
Despite Hollywood calling out to her Audrey Tautou seems more than content with working in the French film industry. And she is back on the big screen this week with her new movie Beautiful Lies.
30-year-old Emilie runs a hairdressing salon, and provides an endless stream of well-meaning advice to her clients and friends...
Sadly the one person she can't seem to help is Maddy, her mother, who has given up the will to live since being left by her husband, who is now getting married to a much younger woman.
Jean, a young man who works for Emilie is secretly in love with her but a pathological shyness prevents him from declaring his feelings. Finally, unable to contain himself, he opens his heart in a passionate anonymous letter.
Emilie, entirely untouched by this secret confession love letter expresses her disinterest by throwing away the letter in front of the bashful Jean; But later, terrified to see her mother slipping deeper and deeper into despair, Emilie concocts a crazy plan: she'll change the name at the top of the letter and send it to Maddy.
Deeply touched by this beautiful declaration of love, Maddy rediscovers the will to live and begins to watch for the mail. While she's over the moon to see her mother returning to life, Emile is fully aware of the problems that lie ahead.
Not only must she supply Maddy with more love letters, she must also find someone willing to play the author.
No matter what role that Tautou takes on she really is a captivating actress who brings any and every role to live.
She is superb as Emilie who is running out of patience with her wallowing mother before finding the solution to her problem, or so she thinks.
The relationship between mother and daughter is both charming and heartbreaking as you are never quite sure for their conversations are heading for hug or a fight.
This is a quirky movie more than anything that features some great characters and the back-drop is simply beautiful.
But it's Nathalie Baye who steals the show as Maddy Dandrieux. a character that struggles to control her emotions and gets swept away; at rather comically, in the whole love letter saga.
There's also an interesting relationship between Emilie and Jean which gets steadily worse as the film goes on as they struggle to deal with the situation in which they both find themselves.
I suppose as a romance/comedy the movie could have done with a few more laughs while some of the characters just seem like afterthoughts rather than being fully fleshed out.
But Beautiful Lies is an enjoyable watch that follows the ups and downs of romance as well as showing the lengths we will go to for the people we love.
Beautiful Lies is out now.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Audrey Tautou