Customer Reviews

The Girl from Monaco

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What's not to like about this movie?
hot woman
sunshine
beautiful scenery
sex
drama
Russian mafia
quee rs
murder
bodyguard

Mix that all up & you get a story about locals trying to survive off wealthy visitors.
Who done it?
Who did who?
You'll have to find out yourself.

There are some one liners about male female relationships that had me ROFLMAO!
good movie for males or females ...

Pure junk. The scenes of Monaco are great and the bodyguard in the movie is superb. The rest of the cast and story are beyond lame. The girl is cute but hardly a Brigitte Bardot or Catherine Denevue. The lawyer is a cartoon really. The acting is just too cool for school at times and at other times like a bad Peter Sellers.

I really don't know why this film was made. It tried to be a comedy and ends up really a tragedy. It's like they attempted an American comedy (you know where violence has to be thrown in for no apparent reason) but fail on all accounts.

I saw ads for this on youtube and decided to get it. It is at its advertised; a lawyer working on a case in monaco meets this attractive nympho who is a weathergirl and gets involved with her. It kept my interest and I was interested but it did not knock my socks off. I will not give away the ending but it was subtle and a letdown. I had wanted a more conventional ending than the one this movie has. If you like light comedies/romances you might like this.

The French can do comedy very well indeed- as anyone who has seen THE VALET can attest. And it is good that when the French do comedy that the come from a uniquely French standpoint: In THE VALET our hero does not get 'the girl' - but he does get the girl he really always wanted- which is actually better than a Hollywood ending (and along the way we get some extremely funny moments).

This could have been one of those movies. It was not. But it did have some good moments when it was a pleasure to watch. Other moments- not so much. Still, with a beautiful actress and great location scenery it was not a total waste of time. It just could have been better.

Directed by Anne Fontaine, from a screenplay by Fontaine and Benoît Graffin, The Girl from Monaco suffers from an identity crisis. It could have been a great romantic comedy on the back of the masterful performance by Fabrice Luchini, playing the part of professionally successful but personally hapless attorney Bertrand Beauvois. Parisian Beauvois takes a high profile murder case in the principality of Monaco, only to land in the crosshairs of ambitious weathergirl Audrey Varella, played by the lovely and perhaps talented Louise Bourgoin. I say perhaps because the only role in this film with more than one dimension to it went to Luchini. It's hard to see an actor's range when they aren't given more than one or two emotions to portray, and Bourgoin is reduced to giggling and pouting her way throughout the film. Audrey sees stardom in her future, and Beauvois is the rocket ship on which she'll arrive. Coming between the two is the bodyguard Christophe Abadi (Roschdy Zem, who is only allowed to scowl in the film), hired by the family of the widowed accused murderer to protect Beauvois from the Russian mafia.
I mentioned that this film would have made a fine romantic comedy only because that is the direction it was heading in the first act of the movie. In subsequent acts it also had the potential to be a drama or a courtroom thriller, but it seems that Fontaine reached a bit too far and went for all three. It could be that the mistakes were made in the editing room by Maryline Monthieux (whoever edited the televised version of French Kiss hacked it up so badly that Kevin Kline's character went from being a romantic to looking like a rapist), but with Fontaine's role as director and screenwriter the final responsibility for this movie must rest on her shoulders.
The Girl from Monaco has its charms. The location shots were beautiful, the pacing of the film was superb, and the casting was dead on. My biggest overall problem with this movie was that it ended on such a false note. Luchini's performance was wonderfully nuanced and elevated the material, but as the closing credits rolled I felt disappointment and a little sadness for the film that could have been.