in French, with English subtitles
Directed and written by Pierre Salvadori;
Running time: 110 minutes. This film is rated R.
Daniel Auteuil, José Garcia, Sandrine Kiberlain, Marilyne Canto, Andrée Tainsy, Michèle Moretti, Garance Clavel and Fabio Zenoni.
Pierre Salvadori's meandering comedy "Après Vous" offers the pleasure of watching the great French actor Daniel Auteuil squirm delicately through the role of the world's most overzealous, uptight good Samaritan. With a slight wrinkle of the nose and a hardening of his expression, Mr. Auteuil can morph from a rabbity milquetoast into a shark. The expression he wears through much of the movie is a half-and-half look of pained exasperation, which lets him wring a hundred variations on the discomfort of someone forced to appear composed amid chaos of his own devising.
His character, Antoine, manages a snooty Parisian restaurant where wine is the thing. His life changes the night he saves a stranger by dashing into a park and cutting the noose as he is about to hang himself. With Louis (José Garcia), the would-be suicide, protesting every step of the way, Antoine drags him home to the apartment he shares with Christine (Marilyne Canto), his girlfriend of three years. And over her strenuous objections, Antoine makes it his personal mission to fix everything wrong in Louis's life.
A neurotic, self-pitying drama queen, whom Mr. Garcia plays as a manipulative crybaby wallowing in misery with a mischievous, barely disguised sense of enjoyment, Louis is a good Samaritan's worst nightmare. Because he has already mailed a farewell letter to his grandparents, Antoine takes it upon himself to intercept this final bleat of agony and to improvise a phony message of well-being, which he recites to Louis's nearly blind grandmother (Andrée Tainsy).
Next on Antoine's things-to-do list is to give Louis a crash course in wine stewardship and then cajole the hard-bitten owner of the restaurant he manages into hiring Louis as its new sommelier. The scene in which Louis, tongue-tied and panic-stricken, auditions for the job and gargles the sample from his wine-tasting test while Antoine frantically coaches him in sign language is the movie's funniest. It is nearly matched by Louis's complete ineptitude on the job, which Antoine tries to cover up by paying for high-priced wines that make Louis look like a persuasive salesman.
If "Après Vous" maintained this level of humor, it might have been a classic of its kind. But once Antoine tries to salvage Louis's miserable love life, the movie goes flat.
The immediate spur to Louis's act of self-destruction was his being dumped by his willowy, poker-faced girlfriend, Blanche (Sandrine Kiberlain), whom Antoine tracks down at the flower shop where she works. Insinuating himself into her life, he begins to meddle and pull strings, and the story starts to lose track of itself in these increasingly bewildering, unfunny romantic shenanigans.
As the movie drags on for nearly two hours, you get the uneasy sense that Mr. Salvadori and his screenwriting collaborators are making it up as they go along. The farcical tone softens, and the visual jokes fizzle. Ms. Kiberlain, when well used in the movies, conveys an ambiguous mixture of fragility and backbone, but her subtle acting style is not suited for farce.
The use of comic leitmotifs - a cardboard cutout of Blanche's profile, a telltale cigarette lighter that is passed from one character to another, and the oft-quoted phrase "narcissistic injury" - lends the movie an appearance of form, even after its structure has crumbled. Had it had the concision and symmetry of a classic French farce, "Après Vous" could have been an irresistible laugh machine.
Daniel Auteuil, who seems to be the busiest actor in France right now, has that look about him of a man worried about whether he is doing the right thing. In "Apres Vous" he does the right thing and it results in nothing but trouble for him. He rescues a man in the act of committing suicide, and then in an irony which is probably covered by several ancient proverbs, he feels responsible for the man's life.
Auteuil plays Antoine, the maitre d' at a Paris brasserie, which, if the customers typically endure as much incompetence as they experience during this movie, must have great food. Taking a short cut through a park late one night, Antoine comes upon Louis (the sad-eyed, hangdog Jose Garcia), just as he kicks the suitcase out from under his feet to hang himself from a tree. Antoine saves him, brings him home, introduces him to his uneasy girlfriend Christine (Marilyne Canto), and cares more about Louis than Louis does.
Louis, in fact, wishes he had committed suicide. He is heartbroken over the end of his romance with Blanche (Sandrine Kiberlain), and suddenly remembers he has written a letter bidding farewell from life and mailed it to the grandmother who raised him. Antoine promptly drives through the night with him to intercept the letter, and finds himself living Louis' life for him.
"Apres Vous" is intended as a farce, but lacks farcical insanity and settles for being a sitcom, not a very good one. One problem is that neither Louis nor his dilemma is amusing. Another is that Antoine is too sincere and single-minded to suggest a man being driven buggy by the situation; he seems more earnest than beleaguered.
Farces often involve cases of mistaken or misunderstood identities, and that's what happens this time as Antoine seeks out Blanche, finds her in a florist shop and falls in love with her. That would be a simple enough matter, since after all she has already broken up with Louis, but Antoine is conscientious to a fault, and feels it is somehow his responsibility to deny himself romantic happiness and try to reconcile Louis and Blanche. Since there is nothing in the movie to suggest they would bring each other anything but misery, this compulsion seems more masochistic than generous.
Much of the action centers on the brasserie, Chez Jean, where I would like to eat the next time I am in Paris, assuming Louis and Antoine no longer work there. Louis gets Antoine the wine steward's job, despite Antoine's complete lack of knowledge about wine; he develops a neat trick of describing a wine by its results rather than its qualities, recommending expensive labels because they will make the customer feel cheery. This at least has the advantage of making him less boring than most wine stewards.
Blanche, meanwhile, doesn't realize the two men know each other, and that leads of course to a scene in which she finds that out and feels betrayed, as women always do in such situations, instead of being grateful that two men have gone to such pains to make her the center of their deceptions. There are also scenes that I guess are inevitable in romantic comedies of a certain sort, in which one character and then another scales a vine-covered trellis to Blanche's balcony, risking their lives in order to spy on her. I don't know about you, but when I see a guy climbing to a balcony and his name's not Romeo, I wish I'd brought along my iPod.
There is a kind of mental efficiency meter that ticks away during comedies, in which we keep an informal accounting: Is the movie providing enough laugher to justify its running time? If the movie falls below its recommended laughter saturation level, I begin to make use of the Indiglo feature on my Timex. Antoine and Louis and Blanche make two or three or even four too many trips around the maypole of comic misunderstandings, giving us time to realize that we don't really care how they end up, anyway.
Après Vous is a romantic comedy, starring Daniel Auteuil in a role quite different then a few of the other movies I have seen him in, though one, The Closet, was another comedy I really enjoyed with him in the leading role. When I think of his movies two most often come to mind, Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, both far different then the charming leading man he plays in Après Vous. In those two he was a grubby, unkempt farmer, with selfish motives though-out and decidedly unattractive for what you would consider a love interest, though there was a love story involved in Manon of the Spring, of sorts. But in this movie he shined and his crooked smile charmed.
Basically, Après Vous is a tasty French treat, tasty because it’s about a restaurant manager who works in a fancy Parisian bistro. One night, Antoine, (Auteuil), decides, on his way home to take a shortcut through a park where he spots a very unlikely sight…There, in front of him, is a man standing on a suitcase with a noose around his neck about to do the dirty deed…He intervened and against the wishes of the man, saved his life. He then takes this very despondent man home with him. Louis, (Jose Garcia), the lovesick and terribly sad stranger, opposes this act of kindness but goes along with him anyway.
When they get home his girlfriend Christine, (Marilyne Canto), is not too happy to have to share the weekend they had planned with this despondent guest. But Antoine prevails and soon becomes more then involved in the life of Louis.
It seems Louis had a very unhappy breakup with the love of his life, Blanche, (Sandrine Kiberlain)...Blanche has gone on with her life but Louis is miserable so therefore he decided to end it all, that is, before Antoine came along.. So now Antoine feels responsible for him and decides to fix all the wrongs in Louis’s life.
First, when Antoine finds out Louis sent a suicide note to his elderly grandparents, he decides he has to get that letter before they see it…This scene was one of my favorites, when he drove to a small village near St Malo, in Northern France..This is the ultimate charming French village with its narrow streets and old buildings which made me long for a visit as well…But, I digress...He does find the letter and has to read it to Granny since she had cataract surgery…Of course Antoine changes the entire tone of the letter to reflect an entirely different content...Ahh, success. So now on to fix some more of Louis’s life
He then decides to find and visit Blanche in the florist shop where she works…. Next, he recommends Louis for a job in his upscale restaurant as a sommelier. A strange occupation for someone so shy and uneducated about wines in general…Both scenes and more in this film, were fun to watch as Auteuil does a bit of slapstick comedy, so different then those previous roles I’ve come to think of him in.
When Antoine decides he has to break up the relationship Blanche has with her new unfaithful boyfriend things take a bit of a turn in all their relationships...Meanwhile Louis changes in many ways with a newfound confidence…That, along with his much more tidier appearance, makes him decide to win back Blanche.
Meanwhile Antoines' life seems to be spinning out of control after Christine breaks up with him and he seems to be a bit more than just a little attracted to Blanche.
A few twists and turns in the story occur but I don’t want to give everything away, just suffice to say this is a delicious comedy and a delight to watch for all fans of movies with a French twist and many French flavors. But be forewarned, watch Après Vous with a full stomach as the platters of food shown served in the restaurant are guaranteed to make you hungry and thirsty for a gorgeous gourmet meal and fine robust French wine.
One night, Antoine (Daniel Auteuil), the affable headwaiter of a swank Parisian restaurant, saves a sad sack named Louis, who's just been dumped by his girlfriend, from killing himself. By the following morning, the sympathetic Antoine has committed himself to rehabilitating his newfound charge, going so far as to intercept the suicide note Louis had written to his octogenarian grandmother. That sequence, featuring the brief but hilarious appearance by veteran French actress Andrée Tainsy as the doddering, sightless grandmother, starts this movie off with an invigorating jolt of lunacy -- and augers a refreshingly zippy and carefree farce. That early momentum, however, slows to a casual amble and, while Après Vous can't quite deliver on its early antic promises, it does provide us with reasonably winning and digestible fare.
You really have to give it up for Antoine. Not only does he put up the hangdog Louis at the apartment Antoine shares with his girlfriend, Christine (Marilyne Canto), he also lands him a gig as a sommelier at his restaurant -- a job that the bumbling Louis is woefully unqualified for (and something the movie milks its fair share of laughs from). In spite of his employer's disgust at Louis' performance, Antoine's resolve is rock solid. It's only when he crosses paths with Blanche (Sandrine Kiberlain), the freckled and long-legged florist that Louis continues to carry a torch for, that he begins to crumble. Antoine and Blanche's immediate chemistry spills into their separate lives, threatening to founder Antoine's relationship with Christine, not to mention the still-pining Louis' mental stability. The swing of the plot's emotional pendulum leads to romantic contretemps that are funny without sacrificing the movie's essential heart and humanism.
While perfectly professional and generous towards his performers, Pierre Salvadori's direction lacks the nimble-footedness of screwball comedy and, as such, it bogs down the material, belaboring what should've been a short, brisk lark into a nearly two-hour affair. The movie has the framework of screwball comedy but comes to us dressed up in the somber robes of interpersonal drama. The screenplay for Après Vous is credited to Salvadori and Benoît Graffin. Daniele Dubroux and David Colombo Leotard, meanwhile, get credit for "Original Idea" and "Screenplay Collaboration" respectively. With that many cooks in the kitchen, one might expect a soup with more complex flavors and greater pungency. Their story's plotlines and character arcs may be clean, but they're also rather flat and simplistic. With tighter pacing and a nose for anarchic humor in the manner of, say, Hawks or Cukor, Salvadori might've sharpened his movie's edges and livened up its more listless stretches.
Still, what Après Vous' screenplay and direction do offer is an opportunity for its ensemble to stretch its legs. Auteuil, already a well-established and -respected presence in modern French cinema, gives the movie its magnetic center -- its clumsy heart and slapstick irreverence. With his slow-burn manner and delivery, Auteuil injects vitality into Salvadori's otherwise stodgy framings. José Garcia's mealy-mouthed Louis is amusing but his performance feels gimmicky alongside Auteuil's natural charm, while Kiberlain's Blanche has a morose attractiveness that keeps us hooked. Après Vous doesn't have the verve of His Girl Friday or The Philadelphia Story to rip it up as a screwball farce. Ultimately, it's got too sweet a soul for that and, even as we wish for a more bracing concoction, it's still one worth savoring.
"Apres Vous" ("After You") is an affecting and funny French comedy about a do-gooder, Antoine (Daniel Auteuil), who rescues neurotic sad-sack Louis (Jose Garcia) from hanging himself in a park.
It turns out Louis has been dumped by his girlfriend, Blanche (Sandrine Kiberlain), now working in a florist shop.
Antoine, who works as a maitre d' at a local restaurant, takes in the lumpish Louis, over the objections of his own girlfriend, Christine (Marilyn Canto), and eventually gets him a job at his restaurant as a sommelier. His audition for the job is quite hilarious, as Antoine attempts to throw him clues behind the back of the brasserie's owner (Michele Moretti). When he lands the job as wine steward, he follows Antoine around like a puppy dog, and continues to be utterly inept. "There's more wine on the tablecloths than in the glasses," the owner notes wryly. Louis seems to barely respond to or appreciate all of Antoine's efforts, which even include paying his medical bills, but Antoine is determined to be a good Samaritan.
Furthermore, Antoine surreptitiously attempts to interest Blanche in her old flame, but Blanche now has a new fiance, whom Antoine discovers to be a ne'er-do-well. Antoine contrives to have Blanche witness his infidelity, but the fiance still pursues her.
Before long, Antoine finds himself falling in love with Blanche, plunging him into a morass of confusion, and setting up a role reversal with the depressed Louis.
After a bouncy credit sequence suggesting a brisk French farce, director Pierre Salvadori's film takes a little time to get going, but as the story builds so do the plot complications and the laughs, and the film lives up to its farcical promise and is full of felicitous and telling touches.
The plot imparts worthy messages about caring, generosity, friendship and kindness. Against all odds, Antoine refuses to give up on Louis. Essentially, it's a buddy movie, on a higher level than the kind turned out by Hollywood. There's greater complexity here, including the betrayal that can often underlie friendship.
The acting is superb, with the peerless Auteuil giving a brilliantly nuanced performance, his expressions conveying each passing emotion. He's well-matched every step of the way by Garcia whose depressed phobic personality morphs into growing confidence under Auteuil's unwavering support.
If you stick with "Apres Vous" after its leisurely start, you'll be rewarded with a touching and wise comedy of human relationships, and a lesson that helping your fellow man can bring surprising rewards.
The film contains sporadic rough and crude words, mild profanity, some sexual banter and casual premarital relationships. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-III -- adults. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted.
One of the best French movies in recent years was “The Girl on the Bridge,” an electrifying romantic fantasy about the relationship between a shaky knife-thrower (Daniel Auteuil) and the beautiful woman (Vanessa Paradis) that he rescues from suicide with an offer to become the new target in his act. The new French comedy “Apres Vous” seems to have been designed as a goof on that film–not only does it use a similar set-up for the plot, it even features Auteuil in a role not unlike the one he previously played.
Here, he is an overworked headwaiter in a popular bistro who, while running home to see his long-suffering girlfriend, prevents a sad sack (Jose Garcia) from a suicide attempt. Apparently suffering from Clara Nightingale Syndrome (as they called it on “Seinfeld), Auteuil decides that he is now responsible for the doofus and tries to snap him out of his funk by giving him a place to sleep, getting him a job as a sommelier in the bistro (despite his ignorance of wine and utter lack of people skills) and attempting to reunite him with the ex-girlfriend (Sandrine Kiberlain) who helped trigger the suicidal depression in the first place. The latter is complicated somewhat when he inevitably begins to fall for the girl as well.
Like too many recent French comedies, the biggest flaw with “Apres Vous” is that it simply isn’t that funny–although the idea of a weirdo dismantling the life of his super-cool benefactor might sounds like the launching pad for some Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis-style hi-jinks, the comedy here is paced too slowly and as a result, it never begins to build the head of comic steam that might have pushed it over the top. There are only a few amusing moments here and there (I love a bit where Auteuil tries to track the girl down using a silhouette instead of a photograph) and most of the remaining interest comes from having the opportunity to see serious actors like Auteuil and Kiberlain getting a chance to cut loose with lighter material for a change.
However, “Apres Vous” is just too bland and formless to generate enough laughs to warrant a recommendation. The premise, though, is appealing enough that I can see someone taking it on in the near-future, tightening up the dead spots and emerging with something worthwhile. Actually, this could be the rare occasion where the all-but-inevitable English-language remake (with such an easy-to-grasp premise, you know it is only a matter of time) actually has a chance of improving on the original.
By taking its cues from the old saw that no good deed goes unpunished, Après Vous earns its place in the pantheon of well-regarded French-language comedies (The Dinner Game, for instance) that find their humor in mounting complications.
A suicide attempt by unlucky-in-love sad sack Louis (José Garcia) grabs the attention of good Samaritan Antoine (Daniel Auteuil), who makes the grave error of taking sympathy on the wannabe corpse. A temporary cohabitation arrangement follows, with Antoine volunteering all manner of favors for his new roomie; naturellement, all this do-gooding translates into nothing but trouble for poor Antoine, whose own life starts to go into the dumpster with frightening speed even as Louis is finding his feet.
Director Pierre Salvadori's dryly malicious take on the buddy picture sags a bit around the two-thirds mark – he's attempted to hang more on the film than its basic framework can support – but there are still plenty of rib-tickling highlights, like a wonderfully uncomfortable pantomime routine performed by Auteuil. Besides, a sweet center rests beneath the film's crusty exterior; Salvadori clearly wants us to recognize that self-sacrifice is a noble ideal no matter how likely it is to put one's croquettes in a vice.
Altruism breeds nothing but trouble for Antoine (Daniel Auteuil), the generous soul at the heart of Pierre Salvadori's romantic comedy Après Vous. Late for dinner with his girlfriend Christine (Marilyne Canto) because he's stayed after hours lending a helping hand at his brasserie job, Antoine takes a shortcut through the park and stumbles upon Louis (Jose Garcia), a lovelorn sap whose misery over the loss of his girlfriend Blanche (Sandrine Kiberlain) has driven him to suicide. Antoine prevents Louis from hanging himself, yet this compassionate act sets in motion a farcical chain of entangled events in which he, Louis, Blanche, and neglected, unhappy Christine—who rightfully resents how much attention her beau lavishes on strangers—all learn about the true nature of friendship and love.
Though it calls for bug-eyed goofiness from Auteuil (a French superstar prone to painful comedic overstatement) and sad-sack mopiness from Garcia, Salvadori's film stops short of all-out slapstick, a decision that both benefits its romanticism and hinders its already strained humor. Antoine and Louis's infatuation with Blanche may be woefully contrived—a problem amplified by the blandness of Blanche, a cipher whose demureness is meant to be intoxicating but instead comes across as simply boring—but at least Auteuil and Kiberlain share some sensual chemistry during a silly scene in which their kissing serves as a rebuke to Blanche's philandering fiancé.
In contrast, nearly every joke, ranging from those about spilled wine and misread marriage proposals to a rather repellent instance in which Louis scrawls "Bloody Bitch" on his meddlesome (and sight-impaired) grandmother's overcoat, feels either underplayed or merely off-key.
Salvadori and David Colombo Leotard's rambling script does manage to pinpoint the off-putting narcissism inherent in Antoine's selflessness, and the film finds a small measure of drollness in Antoine's clandestine dinner with Blanche at a Thai restaurant that's complicated by Christine's appearance and culminates in a witty exchange between the two-timer and a puzzled stranger.
All too often, though, the overly long and monotonous Après Vous serves up the unfunny kind of absurdity.
A romantic French comedy of errors, APRES' VOUS is the tale of an impeccable Maitre d' who saves a man from hanging himself, and lives to regret it. While it boasts crisply amusing dialogue and a solid troupe of supporting characters, it's the charm of leading man Daniel Auteuil as the harried Maitre d' that makes AFTER YOU such a treat.
Antoine' (Auteuil) is the Maitre d' of a posh restaurant who excels at making the customers happy. He's polite, good natured, and attentive. . . and sometimes he just doesn't know how to say "no". This is usually a point of tension between him and his girlfriend Christine (Maryline Canto), since he is often late to meet her because he's stayed late at work to deal with problems or placate a customer.
During one such evening, as he is running through the park to meet his girlfriend well past the appointed time, he comes across a man standing on his suitcase with a noose around his neck. Despondent over the loss of his beloved girlfriend, Louis (Jose' Garcia) is determined to end it all. Ever the good Samaritan, Antoine' jumps to the rescue and cuts the man down. Upon learning that Louis has no place to go, he brings him home, helps him get cleaned up, and even helps him intercept the suicide letter he mailed to his grandparents (quite possibly the film's funniest scene). Much to the consternation of Christine, Antoine' even gets Louis a job at the restaurant, and tracks down Louis's ex girlfriend, Blanche (Sandrine Kiberlain) with the hopes of reuniting the two so that he can get Louis the hell out of his house.
But when Antoine' meets the stunning Blanche, discovering an unexpectedly strong attraction with her, things get ridiculously complicated, and ridiculously funny.
The template of a guy helping another guy try to get back his girl, only to fall for the girl himself, is certainly nothing new. But director Pierre Salvadori, along with the odd-couple pairing of Auteuil and Garcia (two of France's biggest comedic leading men), all bring such a joi d'vivre to the project that you can't help but have a little smile on your face as the closing credits roll.
The weaknesses of these three characters are exploited for laughs, but they are also explored enough to give them a depth that's missing from the usual Hollywood love-triangle rom-com formula. Antoine' is a great guy, but his saviour complex gets him in trouble while trying to spare others from it. Louis is so shattered by Blanche's leaving him, that he is an emotional mess with his heart on his sleeve (leaving a little on the sleeve of anyone he brushes up against, as well). And Blanche is the kind of woman who would rather take back a cheating boyfriend than be on her own, finding no comfort in Antoine's proverb that "No company is better than bad company".
Although the love triangle hijinks begin to get stretched thin by the third act, AFTER YOU wraps things up on a high note. And while it basically reuses all of the conventions of a typical French farce, it does so with winning aplomb.