lazarillo This is a pretty typical French farce. As is in seemingly all French movies, most of the characters are on vacation at a beach resort (although one actually stays back at home working!). There are three middle age couples and their assorted children/step-children. Two of the women (Charlotte Rampling and Karen Viard) are long-time friends and they meet a third woman (carole Bouquet) with a VERY jealous husband at the resort. Viard and her husband have a new baby and financial troubles. There's a young woman (Clotilde Coreau) and a teenage boy, who are somebody's children (this movie has no English subs and my French leaves a lot to be desired). Another daughter (Lou Doillon) has gone on a separate vacation to Chicago with her father's hapless employee and she proves to be WAY more than he can handle. One of the married couples each have casual, breezy affairs. There's also the usual French May-December sexual encounter, but with gender roles reversed (older woman-younger man) and a transsexual.I didn't really recognize most of the male cast, but the female cast here is quite impressive. Charlotte Rampling is a Brit actress, but since collaborating with Francois Ozon on a couple films, she has worked mostly in France the past decade or so. Carole Bouquet is a former Bond girl ("For Your Eyes Only") and ex-wife of Gerard Depardieu. She's had a long career in French film going all the way back to Luis Bunuel's last film, "That Obscure Object of Desire". Lou Doillon is the French daughter of another transplanted Brit actress, minor 60's sex symbol Jane Birkin, which would also make her the half-sister of Charlotte Gainsbourg. She is not as talented as her sibling, but she might be even more sexy, and she has pretty much all the erotic scenes here (of which there are surprisingly few for a French movie). Clotilde Coreau, on the other hand, might be most famous (well, with me anyway)for her hot and gratuitous lesbian scene in the bizarre French slasher film "Deep in the Woods", but most of her other French roles have been much more sedate and mainstream like the one here.Of course, I would need to see this with English subs to fully appreciate it, but even in French it is pretty energetic and fun. If you generally like these French/continental bedroom farces, I'm sure you'll enjoy this one.

Henry Fields "Embrassez" has traces of Woody Allen and some others from the old same soft comedy, it will sure satisfy those who are looking for a movie that make them smile. That's the purpose of Michael Blanc and I think he achieved his objective.Rich and mature people that do not know what to do with their lives, sick of everything and of everyone. Jelaousy, infidelity, intrigue and a thousand misunderstandings. If you got all those ingredients, then nothing can possibly go wrong. If also you got actors such as Dutronc, Rampling or Bouquet... well, mission accomplished!! *My rate: 7/10

christopher-underwood This started fairly well and looked like it would be very amusing and for some I know it is. For me though, the characters begin to get rather irritating and by the end really annoying. It seems incomprehensible that any of them would carry on the way they do. 'Carry On', is just about the right expression, too. Director Blanc, who plays the excruciating fat man who thinks his middle aged wife is off with everybody, waffles away in the accompanying 'featurette', seemingly unaware that he has produced something akin to the infamous English series and thinks he's Eisenstein instead. Yes, pretentious is another word that comes to mind, and even if this is based upon an English book and has some elements of the worst of this country's yob/snobby business it is in the end a very French movie. We may overrate our silly soap operas but only the French would consider them 'significant'.

writers_reign Michel Blance, arguably best known outside France for his eponymous Monsiour Hire does an Agnes Jaoui here and takes a principal role as well as directing. It doesn't pretend to be anything but light escapist fare and as such it's reasonably successful. For some reason directors keep on casting that non-actress par excellence Charlotte Rampling who's ruined as many GOOD films as Peter Greenaway has made BAD ones - in each case every one they've made - and once again she lets the side down whilst in a wonderful touch of irony she shares a 'moment' with that other total loss Gaspard Ulliel (it was a nice if slightly bizarre touch that the Cesars awarded him a Best Newcomer gong last Saturday for A Very Long Engagement, despite his having been in this and Les Egares). Elsewhere there are some REAL talents on display not least Carole Bouquet, Karin Viard and Denis Podalydes. It's all done and dusted inside a week centered on a joint vacation in Le Touquet and Blanc keeps an extended family on its toes not to say mattresses. If you've got 90 minutes or so between planes and a portable DVD player this is as good as any to beguile the wait.