Features > Movie Reviews > Beautiful Lies…

Reteaming with Priceless writer/director Pierre Salvadori, Tautou is Émilie Dandrieux, a woman too preoccupied with her newly opened hair salon to realise that the handyman she employs is utterly in love with her.

Jean (Sami Bouajila) doesn’t look like your average handyman; he’s tall, dark and handsome, and intelligent to boot. So it’s a bit of a mystery why he’s working here, especially when he’s not treated particularly well by his boss.

His feelings are so strong, however, that he puts pen to paper and writes Émilie an anonymous love letter, which doesn’t exactly get the reaction he was hoping for. Émilie, seemingly unaffected by what she reads, scrunches it up and chucks it in the bin, right in front of poor Jean.

But then she remembers her mum, Maddy (Nathalie Baye), who’s had terrible self-esteem ever since Émilie’s dad ran off with a younger woman. In the hope that a whiff of romance might give her mum a new lease of life, Émilie retrieves the letter, types it up on a fresh piece of paper and posts it to Maddy.

She just didn’t bargain on quite how much impact it would have. The next time they meet, Maddy is a different woman, possessed by the prospect of new love. And chaos ensues as Émilie spends the rest of the film desperately keeping up the façade, while Maddy teeters on the edge of hysteria, and Jean is jammed in the middle.

Salvadori wrote the part especially for Tautou and it’s the kind of feisty and quirky part she thrives on. There are a couple of similarities with Priceless, in that the women have selfish and stubborn traits (so it’s often a struggle to like them) and totally dominate the men – though it’s through the male characters that we begin to see the women in a more sympathetic light.

That’s where the parallels end though; for while Priceless is the epitome of luxury and wealth, Beautiful Lies is set in a non-descript French town where Émilie struggles to make a success of her new business.

Tautou is a big name internationally, so it’s perhaps surprising how little she’s explored roles outside of her native France. That said, the French do comedies – especially rom-coms – so well, and without the clichés you expect from their Hollywood counterparts, and she clearly enjoys starring in them.

Beautiful Lies doesn’t have any big surprises and the story takes you pretty much where you expect, but it’s charming in its inoffensiveness, and makes for amiably entertaining viewing.