Not just a gigolo
A popular comedy in this year’s French Film Festival, Priceless (Hors de Prix) has been sneaking into some suburban multiplexes with mixed success. It opens in one of the ritziest hotels in Biarritz, where bartender Jean (Gad Elmaleh) is seen walking the privileged pet dogs of some of the wealthy guests. Much later that night, circumstances find him mistaken for one of the wealthy guests by Irene (Audrey Tautou), a gold-digger who wanders into the bar after her sugar daddy falls asleep before they can celebrate her birthday. Elmaleh is smitten and spends the night with her in a vacant luxury suite. Next morning, when the truth comes out, she abruptly dumps him.
One year later, she and her millionaire are back and a spark in her is rekindled with Jean, but the millionaire catches them kissing and dumps her. Angry with Jean, she heads off to the Riviera but he follows and once again compromises her chances with a rich suitor. She takes her revenge by getting Jean to spend all his savings on her, but he is rescued by a rich widow who mistakes him for a gigolo. Irene proceeds to give him lessons on how to milk the maximum benefit from his patroness. Naturally, love eventually conquers all and Irene and Jean end up poor but happy.
Despite all the amusing plot details, it’s a pretty sordid story which might have worked back in Hollywood’s golden age, 30s and 40s comedies by Lubitsch and Sturges, even more recently in Breakfast At Tiffany’s, but a lighter touch and more charming performances are required than Priceless delivers.
Tautou is glamorous enough but unconvincing -“ her performance when she is teaching Jean how to pretend he’s in love doesn’t seem any different from the scenes where she’s falling in love with him. Perhaps she was too tired, having just come off the long shoot for The Da Vinci Code.
Blue-eyed Moroccan-born Elmaleh is a popular comedian in France, best known here for such dumb comedies as Chouchou, in which he played a simple Moroccan immigrant who becomes a drag queen in Paris and finds romance with an older boyfriend, and early this year in Francis Veber’s The Valet. In Priceless, his material is better, he’s certainly good-looking enough to play a credible romantic lead, but like many comedians (Hollywood is littered with them -“ think Jim Carrey, Steve Martin et al) he can’t let go of his schtick. We want to love him but he’s too stupid.
A major reason for the popularity of Priceless is its luxurious settings. We get to see how the privileged folk spend their lives in four star hotels in Biarritz and Monte Carlo, with colourful widescreen seaside scenery. For some moviegoers, this seems to be enough.
