SYNOPSICS
Pas sur la bouche (2003) is a French movie. Alain Resnais has directed this movie. Sabine Azéma,Isabelle Nanty,Audrey Tautou,Pierre Arditi are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2003. Pas sur la bouche (2003) is considered one of the best Comedy,Musical,Romance movie in India and around the world.
A musical drawing room farce set in Paris in October, 1925. Gilberte, in middle-age, flirts with men but loves her husband Georges, wishing he were more demonstrative. He's negotiating a deal with an American, Eric Thomson, who turns out to be Gilberte's first husband from an annulled and secret stateside marriage. Along with her sister Arlette, Gilberte begs Eric not to tell Georges about the marriage. Meanwhile, a young artist, Charly, pursues Gilberte while Arlette tries to match him with the young Huguette, who loves him. Will Eric play along or try to re-win Gilberte's affection? Can Gilberte play one off against another? And who will manage to kiss whom on the lips?
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Pas sur la bouche (2003) Reviews
frothy frivolity a la Feydeau
This is classic French farce, very theatrical with a 1920s score, entirely interior sets (best being the 3rd act bachelor pad) and ridiculous intertwining relationships. It is tempting to see it almost as an Amelie remake, complete with lush visuals and two leads from that film. It has the same romantic view of French life, the same emphasis on relationships, the same reliance on a sparkling performance by Tatou. It is slow, and hard to follow with subtitles - you really need to speak French to get much out of this (esp the excruiating accent of the American). Some interesting little touches - the spoken credits at the start (very Godardian!) and the way that characters leaving the stage just vanish. It is very witty, brittle and bright. A curiosity rather than a masterpiece.
Sumptuous French Feasts of all Kinds by Resnais
Alain Resnais was extremely comfortable with opulence in 'Last Year at Marienbad', and Alain Robbe-Grillet felt right at home in this, with his serialized writing. I hadn't thought that much about this taste for luxury till I saw his 2003 film of Andre Barde's 1925 operetta, 'Pas Sur la Bouche.' This is easily one of the lightest, most exquisite filmed musicals ever made, and quite as unexpected a thing as possible in this age. There are some modern aspects: the luxury is greater luxury than in the past, but does not ever seem like gluttony; it is not like an exhibition of 100 Burne-Jones paintings, for example, which was about the number in a 1999 exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum here--and that many at once makes one fairly sick. All of the songs are charming, and even the one ugly one is (but only because it is only one; it is truly unpleasant to the ear and could have been styled better even with such meager material): this is the song that Eric Thomson (played by Lambert Wilson) sings with Arlette (Isabelle Nanty) when he is discovered to be doing business with George Valandray (Pierre Arditi) as well as being Valandray's wife Gilberte's (Sabine Azema) first husband (their American-produced marriage was not recognized upon her return to France, although her reasons for dissatisfaction with him are not made entirely clear). Thomson's French seems to have disappeared and he keeps responding to Arlette with "Whaddya say?" and "Whaddya know?" and this is irritating and does not even particularly form a purposeful dissonance with the rest of the graceful and casually elegant Parisian-style music. However, it is followed quickly by a group song when everyone is about to sit down to a "simple meal," which looks rather more as if composed by Escoffier or Pelleprat, and, very campily, Thomson's French reappears as if by magic as he joins all the French people in their tuneful paean to the repast they will consume (in silence, one wishes, but cannot hope for.) This "magical device" is subtle enough to be a considerable improvement over the "spontaneous" bursting into song by the wedding party at "I Say a Little Prayer for You" in 'My Best Friend's Wedding.' The luscious orchestrations of the songs remind one of the Marguerite Monnot-Alexandre Breffort score for 'Irma La Douce'--as in "Dis-donc," and decades of this kind of sound at the Casino de Paris, at the Folies Bergere. There is a lot of red, many plummy reds, in the lavish sets, but it is not discordant. One does notice that the film is almost entirely set in interiors, and the courtyard of witchlike (and sublimely hilarious) Mme. Foin (Darry Cowl) is about the only contact with a little remembrance of sky one sees; but this is usual for sex farce. Everyone is involved with everyone, and it's so silly that only in the viewing does it have life; in the retelling it doesn't have a grain of substance, so I am not going to bother. The players are uniformly characterful and theatrical, and Sabine Azema is superlatively middle-aged-sexy and spirited, while Jalil Lespert has the biggest Frenchest face since Maurice Chevalier: He's truly a major talent. Audrey Tautou seems to be imitating Twiggy in 'the Boyfriend' sometimes, which is cool enough.
A conventional stage farce, not very adventurous but amusing
A 1920s musical farce, with a fine cast. Most of the music is uninteresting, except for the bigger production numbers. The sets are fine, the costumes are gorgeous, and the plot complications very amusing. It is just preposterous enough to be pleasing. Sabine Azéma is glamorous as Gilberte Valandraye, the central character, married to Georges Valandraye (Pierre Arditi), a sophisticated husband with a crackpot theory about feminine naturewomen properly bonded with their first lover/husband will always be faithful. So Georges, who is exceedingly suave, worries not at all about the way men court his wife, and he does not know his new American business partner Eric Thomson (Lambert Wilson) is also his wife's first husband. Eric has a quirk, too: he will not kiss. Meanwhile, one of Gilberte's suitors, a young multimedia artist named Charly, pursued by young Huguette (Audrey Tautou, mostly wasted as an ingenue), makes everyone jealous, and the other suitor, Farandel (Daniel Prévost) does not. The last scene takes place in an elegant bachelor pad à chinoise, in which everything is first confused impossibly and then sorted out. Pleasant, though not exciting. Wondering what it means that Resnais, the maker of such tonily strange films forty years ago, now makes a conventional farceI think it would be fruitless speculation.
Curious museum-piece for an ex-trendsetter
Like several other reviewers I was taken to the film 'cold' without knowing anything about it, and after several minutes was expecting the somewhat lacklustre tunes and stock-farce characters to tip over into something edgy and contemporary. Mais non. However is this such a bad thing? Given the French predilection for unflinching realism and tragic endings, Pas Sur La Bouche can be enjoyed as a salute to the traditions of the Comedy Francaise, an expression of nationalist (anti-Brussels?) sentiment, and as a crafted product as lovingly detailed as a reproduction Deco sideboard. One is almost expected to read afterwards that Resnais had an ironic or iconoclastic subtext in mind, but the film seems to be charmingly irony-free throughout. There are no patronising modernist jabs at the shallowness of pre-war bourgeois entertainment, and in fact the period is recreated with a warm and sentimental glow. It can be argued in fact that the play has been not so much adapted for the screen as embalmed, for there are definite longueurs, the singing voices are almost uniformly mediocre, and the lack of varied or outdoor settings does detract. All in all, a charming, civilised and unexpected entertainment from one of the self-styled intellectuals of French cinema, and a brilliant recreation of an ensemble of now-forgotten French 'types'. To get an idea of precisely how far comedy has 'advanced' in 70 years, compare with Legally Blonde or My Best Friend's Wedding and you'll see my point.
Gushy French musical for doe-eyed centenarians
What was this? Why was I here? The trailer was sophisticatedly blasé suggesting that Alain Resnais had cast Audrey (Amélie) Tautou to target the American market, and that lantern-jawed Jalil Lespert would add to the film's swoon factor. So, expecting a saccharin romcom I had failed to do my homework on Google and I woke up three minutes into the film to a startling revelation. 'It's an operetta! No one told me!' In our thrillseeking contemporary culture accelerated by Karen O's screams and the mentholated bandwidth of broadband wifi, people could question the 2-hour time investment required to watch a bigscreen adaptation of an obscure French-language three-act operetta which was first performed in 1925. Especially one which glorifies the frivolity of the Parisian jetset via music and rhyme, replaces location shots with deliberately stagey sets, and conceals a skeletal plot under the billowing skirts of witty ditties and fully-orchestrated vignettes. The core tune, 'Pas Sur La Bouche', is typical of the film as a whole. It recounts how Eric Thomson (Lambert Wilson), a 'pudibond' (prudish) American businessmen, is too pent up to kiss girls on the lips. Four nubile sirens entreaty the fleeing entrepreneur for a covert snog, and through basic studio boomwork we are subjected to half-length shots of turgid choreography as the frigid, bespectacled yank retreats up the successive tiers of a grandstand. Does Mr Thomson suddenly succumb to the onslaught, staging an impromptu gangbang with the four nymphettes and confessing his concupiscence to a nearby priest? Of course not. It's 1925. Eric Thomson has never heard of Viagra. This is an operetta. Which is fine if you're about 115 years old and you're into the genre. 'Pas Sur La Bouche' certainly seemed like a jolly, nostalgic outing for its dapper actors especially the slinky, hammy Sabine Azéma and the neurotic, unkempt Isabelle Nanty. Wouldn't we all leap at the chance to get dolled up in chintzy art deco garb and to dish up outmoded verbal conceits - in song - to the cinemagoing masses? The plot is the kind of open-door/close-door farce that works well in theatre. Wealthy Socialite Gilberte (Azéma) hides her former marriage from Magnate husband Valandray (Pierre Arditi). Socialite flirts with Beau (Jalil Lespert), a struggling artist. Beau is courted by Belle (Audrey Tautou) yet he prefers Socialite. Belle confides in Socialite's Spinster sister (Isabelle Nanty), who assumes the role of matchmaker. Socialite's American ex-husband (Lambert Wilson) returns to buy Magnate's business. High jinks ensue. After much silliness all ends well. So far, so Molière. The songs (by librettist André Bardé and Maurice Yvain, the Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Webber of their day) are jaunty and innocuous. They offer plenty of scope for the sort of theatrical winks and to-camera headtwists occasionally glimpsed in Abba videos. The standout tracklist below - with rhyming summaries to replace what can only be approximate subtitles - is an appeal to a less faithful rendering of the vaudeville format in future. "Choeur d'entrée" -Rich girls detail their passions for retail, fashions -Subplot rake is overt about his chasing of skirt -Magnate lets rip with his pet discourse: that devil, divorce. "Comme j'aimerais mon mari" -Socialite lauds the botox invigoration of toyboy flirtation -Reveals her projection of six-packed ab onto spouse's flab "Gilberte et Valandray" -Socialite and Magnate engage in kitchen cajoling during lobster-boiling -A warbled feuilleton about riches, kisses, dresses, bouillon "Quand On N'a Pas Ce Que L'on Aime" -Wallflowers debunk the inconstancy of hunks -Hearts flutter, lips quiver, Spinster splutters, Belle shivers "Pas Sur La Bouche" -Stiff, suited yank avoids lolita hanky-pank "Sur Le Quai Malaquais" -Beau and Belle muse their future caress at a Seine-side address -Dénouement will follow, with entire cast in tow And that's about it. Burst into tears, not song. If you want a timewarp back to lavish musicals about Paris, dust off some old videos of Funny Face or Gigi and tap the heels of your black-and-white correspondent's shoes to Maurice Chevalier's 'Sank 'eavens for lee-toll gulls'. Or at least rent Moulin Rouge. It seems that the octogenarian Alain Resnais took heart from the box office success of 'Huit Femmes', François Ozon's singing, dancing allstar vehicle aimed purely at humiliating France's bouffoned-and-tucked grandes actrices. And what with the cinematic euros pouring into musicals of late - Topsy Turvy, Moulin Rouge, Chicago surely this operetta would provide succour to French audiences sickened by the rewind rape scenes of 'Irreversible' or the porno violence of 'Baise-Moi'? With that bobbed actress out of Amélie, it might even have turned a profit.