Customer Reviews

France Boutique [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - France ]

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3 star:		(1)
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Tonie Marshall's France Boutique is one of those French comedies that feels like an outline for a sitcom that nobody bothered to fill in. Francois Cluzet, looking at times uncannily like a Gallic Dustin Hoffman here, and Karin Viard are the couple behind a French shopping channel whose business and marriage are both drifting towards the rocks, with Nathalie Baye in one of her cameos as a smiling Rottweiller out to steal their business by conning them into offering a duff product, the `Fear Eliminator,' and picking up the network for pennies in the ensuing financial fallout. The characters all have comic potential - one presenter (Judith Godreche) stars in porn films on the side, a camp production assistant thinks his homosexuality is a big secret, a production designer is into radical art and the odd spot of S&M and a segment director thinks of his promos as cinematic art - but, aside from a memorable promo for a defrosting tile that prompts an on-camera existential crisis about a wasted life - it never delivers any payoff on them. Still, it's easy enough brain-off viewing and does have interesting production design full of primary colors and pastels that come over well in the 1.85:1 widescreen transfer with optional English subtitles on the French PAL DVD.

We are big Tonie Marshall fans [she directed the Venus Beauty Institute] and this movie has all of the qualities she promotes in her films ... misdirected love .. love out of sinc.... great movie, and a great director. I strongly recommend this film.