the audience applauded

Must See Movie...

A lot of fun.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Mon Pire Cauchemar is a watchable French drama/comedy. I wouldn't say it's the best movie with Benoit Poelvoorde but it's okay to watch once. Benoit Poelvoorde plays one of his typical characters we are used to see, a bit vulgar, obnoxious, fast speaking. I guess it's his type of character. I thought he was funnier in other movies than this one but this movie is more a drama than a comedy anyway. Isabelle Huppert on the other hand is always a delight to watch. Not only for her acting but also for her natural beauty. Time seems to have no grip on her. Her eternal elegance is her trademark. I guess some people have it and others don't, she just has is. The movie itself is like I say watchable, a little bit predictable but no necessary boring. Good enough for me to kill a couple hours.

Some French comedies are my favorites and I own them on DVD ('the closet" comes to mind), usually I am not a big fan of comedies especially the ones Hollywood produces nowadays. Just the trailers keep me from watching them. I found this one in my library as there are not many foreign films available in the movie theaters in my neighborhood.This comedy juxtaposes an uptight highly cultured fine art gallery owner , Agathe, to a down-on-his-luck sleazy former bar owner, Patrick, who lives in his van and desperately tries to find a place to live in a good Paris neighborhood, so that his very intelligent son can continue to go to a good school . His son is best friend of the son of the gallery owner and her life partner Francois , a publicist. This is how the two world clash, because otherwise they would probably never meet.I enjoyed the movie on many levels. European movies are much more realistic in my opinion than Hollywood movies. They use older actresses and actually pair men an women of the same age group. I am so tired of watching grandfathers bedding young girls. And even if Europeans pair a grandfather with a younger woman, the guy admits that he is not really up to the task, like in this movie when Francois , tired of the ice queen Agathe, falls for the tree hugger Julie, who is the one helping Patrick to find an apartment. before social services takes his son away.I was very amused about the portrayal of the art scene which was very well observed and the car wash company Patrick's brother runs. It was not a comedy which made me laugh out loud, but a movie which kept me entertained and smiling the whole time. I am going to look for more movies from this director. The acting from both Isabelle Huppert,( who looks fantastic for a woman of nearly sixty) and Benoit Poelvoorde was spot on and never over the top . I also liked Andre Dussollier in his role as the suffering life partner ...

I liked this movie even though it is not a masterpiece. The acting is great, the story may be not exactly original but believable, even though I was a bit skeptical about it when I read this movie information. Also, you can't go wrong with Isabelle Huppert-she is agelessly beautiful. I liked the absence of female hysteria when it comes to male-female relationships, that dominates most Hollywood movies and TV shows these days. I love French movies and gave up on trying to find one worthy Hollywood movie- they are all the same-terrible performances , soap opera content. I don't find it amusing when males, as species, being degraded to disposable sperm donors. The other French film that i really liked-The big picture (2010)- Oscar worth performance by Romain Duris.

The chance encounter of two different characters, from opposite social environments, having divergent interests, one sticking to the other without the latter being able to get rid of the clinger, is a narrative outline which has been used and abused over the years ("L'emmerdeur", the Pierre Richard/Gérard Depardieu comedies, many a screwball comedy of the golden age of Hollywood,...), so don't expect "Mon pire cauchemar" to surprise you in any way. As a matter of fact, Anne Fontaine's film reproduces the "odd couple" model, with its two main protagonists bickering back and forth most of the film's running time before mellowing at each other by the end of the story. Here you have Isabelle Huppert as a stiff, supercilious bourgeoise vs. Benoît Poelvoerde as a hopeless tosser who sticks like glue to her. However, although "Mon pire cauchemar" does not break any new ground in terms of narrative, it nevertheless works well, both as a pure comedy and a romcom. Two reasons can account for this apparent paradox. The first one is that Anne Fontaine is well aware that she is not innovating here. What she is after in fact is to use the stereotypes inherent in this type of comedies and to play with them in a laid-back way. We have seen Benoît Poelvoerde so often in the role of the self- satisfied pain in the neck that we can guess in advance what his character will say and do. In this case, laughter comes from these very expectations. The same applies to Isabelle Huppert who has more than once been uptight and cold on the big screen. The second reason, as far as the romantic aspect goes, is that Anne Fontaine (along with her co-writer Nicolas Mercier) manages to make us believe in the love story, highly improbable as it appears in the first half. And if she does so, it is because she has been able to give flesh to her lead couple. Even if, for a time, they seem to be nothing but puppets that wiggle their heads and flap their arms in the air, their humanity is gradually revealed when Anne Fontaine goes beyond their blatant defects (Agathe's snobbery and haughty coolness ; Patrick's terrible shamelessness) and shows either partner bringing to the other what he/she misses. Seeing Huppert letting loose and starting at last to ENJOY life and Poelvoorde declare in a moving scene: "I'm just a pathetic schmuck. I'm toxic" marks a welcome change of tone. The funny but mechanical comedy of the beginning has become more profound and we can now adhere to the two characters instead of merely laughing at them. All in all, this is surely not the best comedy ever filmed, but being a well-paced one, moreover very well interpreted by Huppert, Poelvoorde and André Dussolier (never better than when he can, as is the case here, be smart, light and weak), it is well worth seeing.