Entertainment

French friendship flick ‘Lies’ down on the job

France’s friendship dramedy “Little White Lies” is such a blatant rip-off of a far better American movie that it could have been called “Le Big Chill.”

This time it’s Jean Dujardin, the Oscar-winning star of “The Artist,” as Ludo, a hard-partying Parisian who combines aspects of a couple of the male characters in “The Big Chill.” His health crisis causes a gaggle of his best friends to assemble by his bedside — then leave to take a seaside vacation together hundreds of miles away, near Bordeaux. And you thought it was only French waiters who were rude.

At the country house, the friends take stock of their lives, reveal secrets and have meltdowns. Another Oscar winner, Marion Cotillard, plays a vixenish girl whose best friend (Gilles Lellouche) has a “Why did we never hook up?” scene with her. Sad Antoine (Laurent Lafitte) can’t stop talking about his ex, while osteopath Vincent (Benoît Magimel) confesses to his friend and client Max (François Cluzet) that he loves him. The Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival blare on the soundtrack. Instead of touch football, everybody plays soccer.

After drifting along with a lot of repetitive sequences (Max fretting over home-maintenance details, Antoine bursting into people’s rooms to moan about his girl) that writer-director Guillaume Canet should have cut to bring the story in under two hours, the film finally comes together in a potent 40 minutes with several touching scenes.

One guy climbs up a wall to steal into his girlfriend’s apartment just to watch her sleep, and we finally get to appreciate the Dujardin figure a bit in flashbacks. Yet a lot of motivations remain sketchy: Why do they all seem to forget about their friend back in Paris, and why does one character have a massive change of heart?

A film this long should end with the audience feeling it knows the characters like old friends. Instead it ends with an outside observer delivering an insight that isn’t really an insight. Intermittently amusing and convivial as the film is, it totally lacks the warmth of “The Big Chill.”