Review of The Student and Mister Henri

I sometimes wonder if - should I ever relocate to France and have access to a steady diet of films of this quality - I would eventually become jaded and long for a London where, if you're lucky, you'll get a half- decent French film every other Fall. I doubt it because films as good as this are the oxygen of my cinema going despite what the trained seal at filmsdefrance says and if a certain actress is featured you could say I'll be there with Bels on. Now that she has just turned 40 Frederic Bel is not getting the ingenue roles she did in the three films she made with Emmanuel Mourcet - though this film is very much in the style of Mourcet - and here she is the much-married wife around whom the plot resolves given that her father-in-law, the great Claude Brasseur, despises her and bribes student Noemie Schmidt with the offer of a six- months free rental provided she will do her best to break up the marriage. Hardly War And Peace but entertaining and loaded with charm for all that. Put my name on the first DVD off the line.