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Rolling along like a rom-com directed by Steven Soderbergh, Heartbreaker is full of fun and light on cliché. Peter Wild falls for this record-breaking French charmer.

In Heartbreaker – which came to the UK on the back of a record-breaking cinema run all over Europe – Romain Duris (still probably best known from Jacques Audiard’s modern classic, The Beat That My Heart Skipped) plays Alex Lippi, a tousle-haired Lothario whose job it is to infiltrate the lives of young women at the behest of friends or relatives and – using his not insubstantial charms – break up whatever unsatisfactory relationship they are in.

Several spliced scenes later, in which we find out that Alex employs more or less the same routine each time, we learn that he is getting tired of the same-old, same-old and wants a challenge. Enter Juliette Van Der Becq (played with steely precision by Vanessa Paradis), a rich curator on the cusp of marrying rich British financier Jonathan Alcott (Andrew Lincoln).

Juliette is treating herself to five days in Monaco prior to the wedding, so, in the employ of her father – who’s concerned Jonathan will bore his daughter – Alex rolls up as a bodyguard and immerses himself in Wham songs, dirty dancing and Roquefort in order to drive a wedge between the couple. But then, as you suspect it might, the best laid plans of mice and men being what they are, Alex’s mask starts to slip and love blossoms...

Heartbreaker rolls along like a rom-com directed by Steven Soderbergh and is far more fun and less clichéd than it may look on paper. The Monaco setting helps certainly, but the comedy itself is more sophisticated than you might expect, thanks in the main to the hilarious antics of Julie Ferrier and François Damiens who play a husband and wife team in Alex’s employ. The characterisation, too, is a cut well above the norm for romantic comedies.

For those who don’t mind a swishy bit of escapism that will leave you with a smile on your face, you won’t do much better than Heartbreaker.

 

Peter Wild on 27th September 2010
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