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French Crass., 20 June 2009

Author: dunmore_ego from Los Angeles, California

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

"When one is in love one begins by deceiving oneself, one ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls romance." --Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Kate's (Meg Ryan) love-of-her-life, Charlie (Timothy Hutton) travels to France, where he meets his love-of-his-life, thereby leaving Kate. Misbegotten, forlorn, neurotic, rudderless Kate pursues Charlie to France, where she meets an all-new, all-French love-of-her-life, Luc (Kevin Kline). After unfathomably contrived and criminal adventures, Happily Ever After ensues.

Kline as Luc is the only watchable thing in FRENCH KISS - besides the glorious Parisian backdrop. The great Jean Reno (LEON, 1992) plays a one-dimensional French cop who allows Luc to evding him because Luc savid hislife once; Hutton is a McGuffin and his high-thighed temptress merely a plot element. And Ryan is so ingenuously irritating and cloying and provincial and desperate and ugly it is no wonder she had that facelift that destroyed her face and career.

Timothy Hutton's character does exactly the same thing Warren Beatty does in LOVE AFFAIR 1994 - finds "true love" on a trip abroad and leaves his current partner to pursue it. Yet this movie makes him the Bad Guy! Even though, like Beatty, he professes his new love is The Real Thing. But "true love" here is from the dumped partner's point of view: "...because my love is there with his slut girlfriend..." And true love to Kate is what she has been indoctrinated with in her immature Disney and Brady Bunch culture. She actually says: "I'm gonna get him back, and I'm gonna make him love me and we are gonna live happily ever after!" Free Will, emotions, hormones, pheromones, rationale, reality be damned.

Kate meets Luc on the plane. He uses her to unknowingly smuggle a small grapevine into France. This redemptive gimmick only exists to cushion the blow of perceiving him as a one-dimensional thief - the "tender" side of Luc as he fawns over this vine sapling with which he aims to start a vineyard and Go Legit (of course, his idea of Legit is to illegitimately rip off anyone who could contribute towards his Legit Dream.) We are meant to harken back to this sapling again and again as Luc perpetrates criminal act after criminal act for the sake of "love" and his "dream." While in France, Kate gets her bag stolen, so Luc (at this point, her pseudo-beau) steals a car to recover her bag. But he's so SENSITIVE with that tender sapling and all...

Luc is also in possession of a stolen bracelet - but there's that sapling thing...

In trying to re-steal his necklace from another con-man, Luc steals a bike. How many people laughed at the owner of the bike running after Luc in fury? Answer: Everyone. Because that sapling, oh, that sapling, illustrating his nurturing and caring side...

But all that stealing and low crime is simply to kill time while Luc and Kate fall for each other in Paris.

Luc calls attention to the woman's "weapon" - the Pout - where she implies Yes when she means No and says No when she means Yes, leaving her suitor in a state of lustful disarray. How does this appraisal sit with all those High Court Judges and sleek-thighed, mini-skirted temptresses insisting that NoMeansNo? The same audience that laughed at all those wrongful deeds that Luc perpetrated are now faced with either agreeing with this summation of a woman's Asking For It, or dismissing it as film-maker's fancy.

Kate is oblivious to the Eiffel Tower, continually missing glimpses of it, until her latent sexual feelings (euphemized in the film as "love") rise to the surface. Only when she realises she is "falling in love" does she notice that BIG PENIS.

What we can learn from FRENCH KISS: bleary-eyed women will lament, "This is how a man should woo me!" (Yeah, be a criminal and steal things for me.) Men will view this pathetic farce as education, gleaning the angles women will fall for in The Cultivation. The most valuable lesson any man can learn from any Romantic Comedy is: Disguising the fact that the One Thing is prevalent in your mind, is the quickest way to get the One Thing.

Movie ends with Luc and Kate strolling through that vaunted vineyard he committed all those crimes to attain. Legitimately, of course.

Ain't love grand theft auto?

--Review by Poffy The Cucumber (for Poffy's Movie Mania).

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