It is a fact -- different cultures have noticeably different ways to tell stories. I've mostly always enjoyed French movies, because they have a fun, quirky sensibility about them, even hard-hitting ones like "La Femme Nikita." Here the movie opens in the apartment of Jacques (Jean-Pierre Bacri), middle age and balding, with a terminally messy living space. Probably ever since his wife left him just a few months ago for another man. One day, at the bakery, he sees a small ad for a housekeeper, calls her, they agree on 60 Francs per hour, and she starts Monday. He calls her during the day, to see how it is going, and had left her 240 Francs for 4 hours of work. She tells him it will require more than 4 hours. It ends up being 7 hours.
Pretty Belgian Émilie Dequenne, 20, plays Laura who becomes his housekeeper. She is a simple, pleasant sort who likes to listen to loud music when she cleans, and when she is doing nothing watches mindless TV. We find out that Jacques works in a recording studio and prefers classical music. He is more than twice her age, they have nothing in common, but ... a living space.
One day not too long after she starts working for Jacques, she needs to talk. Her boyfriend and she are breaking up and he wants her to move out. With no place to go and not enough income to rent her own place, she begs to stay with Jacques, temporarily.
That is where the story begins to unfold and complications arise. It would be easy to make this an ugly story with a much older man taking advantage of a girl, but it isn't written that way. It turns out to be a nice story with a very interesting development in the end. Worth a viewing if you can get the DVD. I found it at my public library.
SPOILERS FOLLOW. As they are settling into a platonic relationship in Jacques' apartment, one evening Laura approaches him in her night wear, sits next to him, and begins to kiss him. He, being lonely also, is very accepting. We see them wake up together the next morning, naked, we can figure out what happened. Laura appears to have fallen for this older man, tells him she loves him, makes him tell her back. But when Jacques' wife shows up after 5 months, wanting to be taken back, he will have none of it and takes his two weeks vacation to a resort area to stay with an old friend. There Laura being the girl she is runs with the younger crowd, eventually finding a boy on the beach that she likes and tells Jacques she is going with him. The folly of youth, the implausibility of a young girl really falling for an older man. Indignity is added when the boy's mother, on the beach, refers to Laura as his daughter. He doesn't correct her, he simply realizes how foolish he was to not realize the insincerity of Laura, still just a kid.
Pretty Belgian Émilie Dequenne, 20, plays Laura who becomes his housekeeper. She is a simple, pleasant sort who likes to listen to loud music when she cleans, and when she is doing nothing watches mindless TV. We find out that Jacques works in a recording studio and prefers classical music. He is more than twice her age, they have nothing in common, but ... a living space.
One day not too long after she starts working for Jacques, she needs to talk. Her boyfriend and she are breaking up and he wants her to move out. With no place to go and not enough income to rent her own place, she begs to stay with Jacques, temporarily.
That is where the story begins to unfold and complications arise. It would be easy to make this an ugly story with a much older man taking advantage of a girl, but it isn't written that way. It turns out to be a nice story with a very interesting development in the end. Worth a viewing if you can get the DVD. I found it at my public library.
SPOILERS FOLLOW. As they are settling into a platonic relationship in Jacques' apartment, one evening Laura approaches him in her night wear, sits next to him, and begins to kiss him. He, being lonely also, is very accepting. We see them wake up together the next morning, naked, we can figure out what happened. Laura appears to have fallen for this older man, tells him she loves him, makes him tell her back. But when Jacques' wife shows up after 5 months, wanting to be taken back, he will have none of it and takes his two weeks vacation to a resort area to stay with an old friend. There Laura being the girl she is runs with the younger crowd, eventually finding a boy on the beach that she likes and tells Jacques she is going with him. The folly of youth, the implausibility of a young girl really falling for an older man. Indignity is added when the boy's mother, on the beach, refers to Laura as his daughter. He doesn't correct her, he simply realizes how foolish he was to not realize the insincerity of Laura, still just a kid.