Reviews & Ratings for
Too Beautiful for You More at IMDbPro »Trop belle pour toi (original title)

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10 reviews in total

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14 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
L'amour surreal avec musique trop belle, 1 July 2005
Author: willev1 from Florida, USA

The few reviews here indicate that this is a film which provokes in some boredom and confusion, while other will find it provocative and daring in its originality. Maltin gives it a two-star rating and says "after a bright beginning, it goes absolutely nowhere." I was prepared to abandon the film after 15 minutes or so, but the absolutely gorgeous Schubert melodies that pervade the score and tie it all together....they kept me going with the film, and the fantastic photography, acting, and plot twists sustained my interest to the end.

Yes, the approach is surreal and the story-telling non-linear. Much of the dialog is brilliant, but it soon became obvious (to me, anyway) that these people are not actually saying these things to one another ... and what an interesting world it would be if we could say aloud all the things that we deeply feel! I cannot pretend to have understood it all, but the film had an intellectual appeal and, to repeat an earlier point, a ravishing score of Schubert pieces which adorn the film like precious jewels.

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15 out of 18 people found the following review useful:
Clever film on the meaning of love., 26 August 1999
Author: Oliver Smith (zaur@stones.com) from New York City

In this clever take on love and relationships, the affairs of three people are enigmatically portrayed. Everyone adores Bernard's wife Florence. His friends lust for her, her friends envy her. She is very beautiful, and for Bernard there is nothing more left to desire. And that is precisely what troubles him: she may just be too beautiful. His secretary, a temp named Colette, is completely the opposite to Florence. But in her physical unattractiveness Bernard finds a refuge to his peculiar dilemma. Despite of what may seem as a logical explanation, he is not plagued by an inferiority complex. What drives Bernard is the psychological force of the middle-age crisis. Some people wonder whether what they have is as good as it gets. Bernard actually knows that. The second he is near Florence he knows that that is true; gazes of his friends reassure him in that.

With Colette, however, he feels completely at ease. There is no need for self-assertion and he is free to choose. Naturally, there is much more to this film, which is full of surprises and unexpected events. The only country where such a complex and somewhat surrealistic plot could have been brought to life, where careful avoidance of turning the film into a soap opera, a pointless comedy, or a tedious drama meets with the bittersweet taste of love and desire is France, and the philosophy of love, the satire, and the superb acting -- Depardieu, Bouquet, and Balasko make a lovely team -- are also typically French here. Ironically enough, the question of the age is inverted to "what does a MAN want?"

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14 out of 18 people found the following review useful:
Bravo Blier, 7 April 2004

Author: alleyne from London UK

Very few directors are prepared to take the sort of liberties Blier does, both in terms of subject matter and the manner of telling the story. "Trop Belle Pour Toi" is perhaps his most accessible film, telling the story of a successful man with a beautiful wife who unaccountably falls in love with his dumpy secretary. Depardieu is wonderful in this, utterly bewildered by his predicament, and the noted comedienne Balasko is radiant as a woman in love.

The style is almost cubist, the celebrated "beginning middle and end but not necessarily in that order", and alternative storylines are proposed and discarded at whim, to the evident confusion of some viewers. Blier has often gone all out to shock but that's less evident here, however his audacious humour remains intact. Not one for the viewer who likes to sit back and be told a straight story but for the rest of us, a joy from start to finish.

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9 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
Beauty is in the mind of the beholder, 7 April 2006

Author: jotix100 from New York

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This film is making a point about how beauty can be a handicap. Look at Florence, the gorgeous young wife of Bernard, a successful business man in Marseille. Any man could kill for the privilege of being next to such a ravishing creature, yet, Bernard lusts after his plain looking temp secretary, Colette.

Bertrand Blier, a controversial director himself, wants to explore on the idea that sometimes this beauty is too much for a ordinary looking man, with down to earth tastes. Even the exquisite music by Schubert, his own son plays at home, is a cause for irritation for Bernard. When Colette decides to go after him, he feels right at home with this asserting woman who brings a lust in him that is obviously lacking from his own bed at home with Florence. Florence, on the other hand, is a woman that must intimidate Bernard because her beauty is unreachable.

The film is done in a way that most of the dialog consists in the inner thoughts of the particular character that is thinking at the time. These thoughts can be disorienting since Mr. Blier employs a non linear style to present his tale. Thus, the film loses a bit of its immediacy for the viewer that might not be paying attention to what is being said at any particular moment.

By juxtaposing an actor that is the antithesis of handsomeness, Gerard Depardieu, against the exquisitely gorgeous Carole Bouquet, Mr. Blier achieves a coup, because we are trained to believe that only beauty can bring happiness. The plain Colette, being played by Josiane Balasko, is a strong presence in the movie. She achieves all what she set out to do in making Bernard a slave because she understands him intellectually as well as sexually.

The film evidently came and went without much fanfare. Paying a visit to this beautifully photographed film by the great Philippe Rosselot, will delight fans of Bertrand Blier. It also helps that the director has included some sublime music by Franz Schubert in the background.

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
intriguing and beautiful, 24 September 2009

Author: selffamily from New Zealand

I have just finished watching this film, and it is probably too soon to write a review. However, the music is swirling through my head, and the beautiful photography and scenes are fresh in my mind. The glossy elegant wife and the warm but ordinary woman who is the temp at the husband's car retail outlet are both extraordinary women. The wife for her killer intelligence and frankness (now that's a wedding speech that is unusual)and the outrageously warm,sexy woman who falls for and, I suppose, seduces her husband. Yes, it does jump about a bit, and one is never sure with the conversations if that is normal behaviour (in which case, they all have issues). Gerard Depardieu could melt the paint off the walls with his eyes, and his acting has depth indeed. A thought-provoking film, and an absorbing one. Recommended if you like more than a chick flick.

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5 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
Wonderful movie!, 5 November 2006

Author: icedwaif

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I do like surreal films and being a fan of Bertrand Blier found this movie very delightful. Extremely hilarious and well acted, this movie had me hooked right from the beginning. The movie basically handles the breaking down of a marriage due to an affair, and the emotions of the man and the other woman in particular.

The scenes at Depardieu's home with his family and the Schubert music in the background were very amusing. The three main actors were excellent. Carole Bouquet asking "Are there any more questions?" while having dinner with friends was just side-splitting. Josiane Balasko acts her part as the lovesick woman well. Depardieu as usual is an excellent mixture of his vulnerable and tough guy self.

The cinematography was first class and the music score resplendent. Wouldn't hesitate in recommending this film to any lover of international cinema and surrealistic films.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
the eye of the beholder, so forth, 8 January 2011

Author: Michael Neumann from United States

Bertrand Blier's story of love at first sight between a successful auto salesman and his older, unglamorous secretary does more than simply dispel the skin-deep myth of physical beauty. Gérard Depardieu describes his new lover as "not beautiful, but nice", but his aristocratic young wife dismisses her for being 'common', setting up a conflict not between age and beauty but between opposing social classes, with a proletarian lug who married into the upper crust becoming justifiably mushy over someone less pretentious than his wife. It sounds like fun, but anyone expecting a lightweight romantic farce will be disappointed to find something closer to an intellectual exercise in style, designed around an exaggerated sense of melodrama and several odd, operatic gestures: characters thinking out loud in public or engaging in third-person soliloquies, and so forth. Not to mention, in an obscure ongoing joke, a few outspoken criticisms of the music of Franz Schubert.

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6 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
Excellent French Complex Love Triangle and Comedy, 8 January 2006

Author: (paulharhen@eircom.net) from Ireland

Here is a man who wants more than the trophy wife, career, house and family, and loses it all.

She, the wife, is an upper-class beautiful women. She also has given her husband access to her circle of friends too. She operates in an artificial world and is essentially lonely.

The new women on the other hand has given up, a long time ago, on meeting her "prince in shining armour".

The mixing of past, present and future, and the internal retrospective views add complexity.

It potentially can happen to us all. Hence the allure...

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8 out of 23 people found the following review useful:
Left me cold, 4 July 2004

Author: George Parker from Orange County, CA USA

"To Beautiful For You" tells of a French car dealer (Depardieu) who is married to a beautiful women (Boquet) but falls in lust with his less than beautiful temp (Balasko). What follows is an affair and much discourse about same between husband and wife, wife and temp, temp and husband, and all permutations thereof as they ponder the meaning of love. The film is not for want of a good cast or production talent and earned respectable marks from critics and public alike. However, is suffers from obvious histrionics and didactics and an off-puting uneven flow which make for a less than immersing experience. TBFY has little nudity or sex but some very explicit language. Only for those into esoteric French films. (B)

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10 out of 32 people found the following review useful:
too boring for me, 16 March 2003
Author: dbdumonteil

Bertrand Blier is the French Pedro Almodovar: cynical and shocking. Either you love, either you hate his movies. Some of them have divided French public due to their shocking contents, notably "Les Valseuses" (1974). "Trop belle pour toi" appears like an exception in his work. It means that taste of Blier for provocation is less pronounced. However, it doesn't make the movie better for all that. It doesn't work for several reasons:

first, it's hard to follow the plot because Blier introduces sequences that are earlier or subsequent to the present scene. For example, we realize too late that Colette ( Balasko) after she left Bernard, married with a man and she had children. The movie ignores certain sequences that are however essential to the development of the plot.

Then, the movie irritates due to its main characters, it goes without saying that dialogs are the key to the good development of the plot. But here, you are under the impression that the characters don't exchange their words. They're talking in the emptiness and don't seem to care about the others' opinion!

Let's add that the movie, sometimes, creates a certain boredom because of some lifeless sequences that drag on (notably during dinners in Depardieu's ravishing house with his wife ( Bouquet) and all their guests.

In short, "trop belle pour toi" is a cold and no soul movie and it left me unsatisfied in spite of good ideas in the making ( Cluzet who expresses his anger with Schubert's music in the background played very loud). Even a trio of outstanding actors don't succeed in saving the movie.

Remark: Carole Bouquet won an Oscar in France in 1990, for her performance in this movie. Good for her.

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