Thanks for the memories!

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This is a charming story of unlikely companions cast together by circumstance and hard choices. It is interesting to see how the protagonists use their situation, once they have committed initially to their self interests, to pay each other back, and with love and compassion eventually find what they do not expect. Each phase of this progression is clearly imprinted in the viewer's experience from both points of view in a very patient, but not slow, immersion into the characters' hearts and psyches. The effect of this is to erase the viewer's point of view and leave the audience with a memorable impression of the whole, which is beautiful to behold.

Yet another French actress has turned, via screen writing, to directing and turned out a minor gem first crack out of the box. Inasmuch as it's set on a farm and involves an older man and a young woman it is reminiscent of The Girl From Paris - and that's not a criticism; Mathilde Seigner and Michel Serrault were both excellent - and shows that it is possible to put a spin on this type of story. Michel Blanc farms what seems a touch too many acres for someone working with only a wife and a simple hired hand. Within minutes his wife expires off screen via the electric milking machine leaving Blanc with no one to cook, sew, scrub, do the milking etc so he takes the Dating Agency route and winds up in Bucharest interviewing lots of gorgeous young girls who have all mastered the same mantra 'you're so handsome'. Only one girl, the lovely Medeea Marinescu (who actually hails from Bucharest) has the wit to effect an interest in farming and winds up his best of a bad bunch mate of choice. We've been here before, of course, notably in Rachel And The Stranger, when it took stranger Robert Mitchum to make William Holden see Loretta Young as something else besides a mail-order bride, but this is none the worse for that. This is all about relationships and how difficult they are to both establish and maintain and how people CAN change the habits of a lifetime - a sequence where Blanc, who doesn't like parting with a buck, lays a few thousand euros on Elena and tells her she's cracked the lottery would normally want some swallowing but here we're more than happy to accept it. Two exceptional leads, a low-key story with just the right amount of sentiment; highly recommended.

J'ai trouve cette film tres beau. A lovely little film that was very funny, if not a little disjointed. All the laughs seemed to occur in the first half of the program, with the sadness of the heroine overtaking the hilarity when the full realisation of her situation hits.A French farm couple live a fairly spartan existence, with him tending the fields and her looking after the house and the cows. Unfortunately, the second-hand milking machine blows-up, electrocuting the farmer's wife. This is where the fun starts.Unable to cope with household chores, our farmer resorts to a marriage agency and finds himself in Bucharest, interviewing prospective young women. Although short round and bald, all the girls are trained to tell him he is handsome. (Je vous trouve tres beau). He finds this bewildering. However, he chooses one young woman desperate enough to leave Rumania.Hiding the fact that he has procured a woman from Eastern Europe, the couple return to France, where she puts the house in order. Even the dog becomes loving under her touch. However, the farmer, long dormant in the love department, appears to be resistant to her advances. Nevertheless, he does fall for her charms, realises she is desperately unhappy, and pretending that she has won a trifecta, generously (for the first time in his life?) gives her the money to return home and be secure.This film is amusing and emotional. It reflects country living in France and the sad situation of people living in Eastern Europe, with humour and sensitivity. You will enjoy this film, as long as you don't love cats.

I can't rate this film because I saw only about the first half of it on a flight back from Paris. What I saw I loved.Comedy doesn't travel well. I'm an American, dyed in the wool, and I normally find French comedy annoying--self-conscious and stilted. This movie, however, is funny, and I give most of the credit to Michel Blanc. He is subtly hilarious as the single-minded rube trying to replace his dead wife-cum-farmhand-cum-cook-cum-housekeeper the way you or I might try to replace a pair of comfortable old shoes with new ones. He just can't make the clerk understand.I like hard comedy--vicious satire, outrageous parody, clever wordplay--and this movie is none of those. It could hardly be more conventional. The plot is that of a TV sitcom episode, and the script is studied and tame. Still, I laughed out loud every few minutes, and taking into account jet lag and nicotine deprivation, that's saying something.