France Boutique (2003)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

It is a performances centric movie

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

France and Olivier have started a version of the American television channel where all kinds of products are peddled to a captive audience with nothing better to do. The things they sell are presented in unusual ways. The couple has been married for ten years and the union begins to show signs of stress. Added to the difficulties they are facing, they find themselves targeted to losing control of their shopping network if the wealthy Sofia has her way.The comedy written by its director, Tonie Marshall and Pierre-Erwan Guillaume is only mildly funny in spite of the presence of talented Karin Viard and Francois Cluzet, a man with an uncanny resemblance of Dustin Hoffman. Nathalie Baye, who appeared on Ms. Marshall's "Venus beaute (institut)", is on hand to do a cameo. Veteran actress Micheline Presle, who has a small role, happens to be the mother of the director.

Shopping TV is peculiarly shallow and a laugh in itself. France Boutique establishes this situation and gets us laughing, then goes hilariously French on us, with the seven-year-itchy married partners behind the channel turning neurotic and embarking on affairs that rapidly go pear-shaped. The hubby dates a sexy stand-in designer who turns out to be into SM, and the wifelet moves into a hotel room and goes through a series of gigolos. Along the way she foxes the competition and pulls off a coup that signs the movie off with a bang. This is fluffy, crowd-pleasing stuff that is good for a giggle, as long as you remember that the leading man is NOT Dustin Hoffman (he bears an uncanny resemblance) and that Karin Viard is not Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (they are remarkably alike, and play similar roles). Good fun and well worth a viewing --- some of the "products" flogged on the station are uncannily plausible while being completely potty.

France Boutique is a comedy, very funny withe the typical french humor, what's interesting about this movie, besides having good actors and good script, are the colors it uses, sometimes it feels like it's an old movie as the colors it uses are so soft and pastel, all the colors and forms it uses give harmony to the story. Its a very good film which i truly recommend to people who is interested in not so commercial films. At the beginning it looks a bit slow but as the movie goes on it involves you and gets you more interested, the thing i did not like much is that there are many things that remain in the air, that are mentioned in the film but has no relation to it, its a film to have a nice time, to relax, but even if i like it a lot i feel there's something missing in it.