Nobody Else But You (2011)

Don't Believe the Hype

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

A Major Disappointment

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

I am writing this the day after watching it, and I am finding that it has left a pleasant aftertaste in my mind, so I'm upping my initial rating. For some unknown reason, only the French can make movies like this one without coming off as pretentious or too arty. If some brief male frontal nudity bothers you, best to skip this movie. The first two thirds are slow to build but compelling, charming in some ways, and very well-filmed in a lovely part of France in the winter. After that point it overplays the Marilyn Monroe parallels in a pretty heavy-handed way; however, just when I thought it was going to go down the tubes, it pulls back from the edge, avoids getting too mystical, and ends in a satisfying manner. In the end, a really nice, delicate French treat.

Often a film critic references another film/actor/director in a review to give the reader some sense of the style of film one might expect. (ie: "Hitchcock-ian," "Spielberg-ian," "Uwe Boll-of-Crap," etc.) I'm guilty of this myself. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it hurts. The comparison often leads an audience to go into a film with certain expectations that are often unfulfilled.Such is how it has been with "Nobody Else but You," a French film now in general release. The material I received when previewing this film compares it to a couple of films/TV shows and I think that, in this case, it does a disservice to the film. I found "Nobody Else but You" to be a winningly original, highly entertaining film and an absolute rarity – a mystery that doesn't telegraph its ending and manages to keep its reveal to the very (satisfying) end.Set in small town France in the dead of winter - isn't winter the best season for mysteries? - Jean-Paul Rouve plays a mystery writer (with writer's block, of course) who arrives in town for the reading of a will. After disposing of his inheritance, he hits the road and comes upon a very unusual scene – a crime scene - the apparent suicide of the celebrity "spokesmodel" for the local dairy (Sophie Quinton.) What's a mystery writer to do? Investigate! And so it begins. Yes, I know what you're thinking. None of this seems very original, but it's not the stock components (suicide/murder/writer's block/narration from beyond the grave, etc.) that make this film. It's what director Gerald Hustache-Mathieu does with them. He takes these hackneyed elements and constructs something new and refreshing around them – and he does it by taking all these mystery fundamentals and inserting them (in a very original way) into what we know about some very famous people.I mean, when's the last time you saw a really good film that combined all those elements with the world's endearing obsession with Marilyn Monroe, her gay iconic status, her relationship with the Kennedys, the mystery surrounding her death and modern French politics - all set to the beat of a kick-ass soundtrack?You haven't. Till now.www.worstshowontheweb.com

Nobody Else But You kind of sneaks up on you. It starts out being a deadpan Fargo like comedy---love that quick shot of the main character throwing away the big stuffed dog in the first 5 minutes---but quickly turns into a slightly melancholy investigation of the death of this local weather-woman. I'm not giving anything away--the body of the woman is found within the first ten minutes of the film and the main character is a writer looking for a subject for his next book---so the plot is set up very nice and neat right at the very beginning. The entire movie is mostly taken up by the writer's investigation (and frustrations in his investigations thanks to all the colorful locals) but rather then focusing on the other people in the weather-woman's life--the writer (and the movie) is really more focused on the woman's emotional state before she died-(the writer stumbles onto her diaries which is a neat way of having her narrate the movie from beyond in a way that makes logical sense and not just there because the director wanted to pay homage to sunset boulevard and American beauty) Eventually we find out that she was hardly the happy go lucky young woman everyone in town makes her out to be--she is in fact a rather sad young woman who completely modeled herself--on Marilyn Monroe---which actually explains the title if you think about it. In fact this movie might actually capture Marilyn's melancholy, bitterness, and flat out sadness better then the recent "My Life with Marilyn" did. (well maybe not better but this would definitely make an interesting movie to watch on a double bill with Marilyn--and it would prob be seen as a good attempt to put "Marilyn" in a noir of her own.) As a who done it the movie is kind of a wash out--we find out who did it all right enough but we're never really given any great motive or incentive for why---in fact i honestly felt the identity of the murderer ended up being pretty arbitrary---but as a story about a young woman who's thirst for fame left her less then satisfied--and as a story about a writer trying to understand the events that led to this young vital woman's demise--the movie was successfully engaging and just different enough thanks to its frigid atmosphere and various local characters to be entertaining. Even if the semi comedy we were kind of set up for at the beginning all but vanishes by the end of the film--the tonal shift from deadpan comedy to slightly bleak drama is handled nicely enough that it never feels jarring while you're watching it (its really only after i started thinking about it after wards that i thought hey when this thing started wasn't it supposed to be a comedy?) If you're in the mood for a more than decent drama with traces of comedy in it (and if you're in the mood for a decent writer investigates a murder movie as well) this should fit the bill.

This crime writer arrives in winter and the first thing he sees is a dead woman being taken care of. That interests him and he starts to explore her life. It has voluntarily and involuntarily been a copy of the Marilyn Monroe story. Complete with "DiMaggio", "Arthur Miller" and so on.It all turns into a crime story of the type he writes himself. But is it interesting? Absolutely too much of the traditional American thrillers here, but with people who don't belong there.You can't even feel enough sympathy for the dead tragic woman to keep your interest up. It would have been better with more talk and less action.