Hair salon owner Emilie (Audrey Tautou) is in a quandary. Wanting to help her depressed mother Maddy (Nathalie Baye) snap out of her stupor, she searches for a way to do this. Retrieving an anonymous love letter written by salon handyman Jean (Sami Bouajila), she gives it to her. Enraptured by Jean’s words, Maddy becomes determined to track down the author no matter what the cost – much to Emilie’s increasingly exasperated chagrin.
For a movie marketed as being a light romantic comedy, Beautiful Lies has very little of it. It’s almost mean-spirited in its approach as it increases the sorry farce the trio create. Emilie’s constant interfering and Maddy’s neurosis makes one wonder what Jean sees in either of them as both ladies are quite unpleasant characters. This immediately makes it difficult to care what happens with a ponderous running time needlessly dragging out events.
Comedy can be very subjective and perhaps something is lost in translation, although Beautiful Lies’ script never properly gels. There’s a feeling moments have been cut that would have made sense of an increasingly confused narrative. It’s a shame as the general concept is sound, but the execution is so woeful and the screenplay demeans the women in a very off-putting manner. The French scenery is always a plus however even if the story around it fails to ignite.
Beautiful Lies is a poor effort making one wonder where the really good foreign films are. Searching for such productions can be fun, although the local distributors need to take more care in selecting offerings better than this mediocre and tired effort.
Movie Review Rating 4 / 10
Movie Review by Patrick Moore
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Patrick Moore's Movie Review is an alternative look at current movie releases in Australia.
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