Little White Lies

Little White Lies (15) – Les Petits Mouchoirs 154 minutes 2011


A blazing hot sun over a cobalt blue sea; good food and fine wine; the company of old friends on an extended vacation. Archetypally French? Undoubtedly. The subject of good cinema? Absolutely. In a complete change of pace from his previous outing - the tense thriller, Tell No One - Director Guillaume Canet brings us Little While Lies, a comedy-drama about a group of middle-aged friends on holiday in France.

We soon realise that all is not well with the lives and loves of these affluent, middle class, Parisien professionals. Max (Francois Cluzet), the restaurant owning host, is impossibly uptight pursuing weasels with an axe at all hours of the night overwhelmed with his best friend Vincent's (Benoit Magimel) sudden declaration of more than just friendship. But even Max looks normal next to the chain smoking, promiscuous, unable-to-commit Marie (Marion Cotillard) emotionally empty, B list movie actor, Eric, (Gilles Lellouche) and carefree hedonist, Ludo (Jean Dujardin), whose accident throws the entire holiday into doubt. What partners there are, look on with a mixture of resigned acceptance (Valerie Bonneton as Max's wife) or stunned shock (Vincent's partner, Pascale Arbillot). And in the midst of this mayhem, the children somehow try to get on with their summer vacation.

As their lives slowly unravel, the lies become more frequent. “We’re off to a nightclub” Eric stammers while in fact driving 600 km to Paris to reclaim his girlfriend. We wince at their increasingly unconvincing attempts to protect their eroding self-esteem - Eric's "she's catching the next flight" less and less believable with each passing day. Finally, the explosion. “Ask your father, he’ll know”, Max erupts to the question of “what’s a homosexual”, innocently asked by Vincent’s young son. But the damage has been done. In showing us their faults, in showing us their flaws, Canet shows us ourselves and it’s not always pretty.

The dialogue is slick, the humour first rate - "This is the owner", Max spits at the weasles, axe in hand, having broken through his own wall in the small hours of the night. "Not so noisy now are we?" The acting is outstanding; Cluzet, tense, taut and ready to snap; Magimel, sensitive, touching and yet aggressive and masculine; Cotillard, sensual, troubled but refusing to judge; Lellouche, recklessly self-destructive and yet unable to change.

Director Canet manages the ensemble with quiet aplomb, his choice of music successfully aggressive, his editing, less ambitious (154 minutes 30 minutes too long). But the end is worth the wait. Friendship, warts and all.

9/10. Dick Morgan.