‘Little White Lies’ A friend in need is a friend indeed

His latest directorial effort, “Little White Lies,” indicates his eminent continuum in the helmer seat despite the sophomore film’s lack of emotional substantiality compared to its predecessor.

Both films make great use of ensemble casts, though Canet indisputably moves in a new direction. This time he utilizes the “longtime friends go on vacation and confront each other on life and love” theme with Paris and Cote d’Azur in the backdrop.

Really, what a brilliant time to release this film, right during the Cannes International Film Festival, when millions of festival followers yearn for the turquoise of the Mediterranean, good food, beautiful people and entertaining chit chat -- basically, that European glamour that the French have always been the herald of. This film might actually satiate those yearnings to some extent.

“Little White Lies” is such a French movie, or perhaps the kind of French movie that reconfirms our fantasies of French joie de vivre and middle class fulfillment, that at one point I found myself pondering why I was so envious and yet full of contempt for its characters. Here are a bunch of people acted by fine French actors comprising Benoit Magimel, François Cluzet and Marion Cotillard (the director’s partner in real life), who live in the pretty neighborhoods and apartments of Paris, make enough money to be considered at the higher levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs diagram, are acceptably good looking in the way that only French people can be (they carry their age with finesse and charm), and ultimately pretend to care about what’s going on in the world despite their massive self-involvement. Furthermore, they enjoy their friendship only to the point where it won’t cause any inconvenience. Here is a very long movie bundled up with all the hypocrisy of Westernized middle-class glamour.

But here’s the real question: Canet is obviously aware of his characters’ flaws, so why does he present them more lovingly than necessary when they all have partaken in an act which is ethically unacceptable in the book of friendship?

The film starts with a hideous motorcycle accident. The victim of the accident, also the group’s clown Ludo (Jean Dujardin), ends up in the intensive care unit. His group of friends comes to visit him and they are obviously very sad to see a friend in such a situation. But the summer has just arrived and these people have already planned for their summer vacation, in which they’ll be staying at the lovely summer house of the group’s richest member, Max (Cluzet). They just can’t cancel it, even if it means leaving their best friend alone at the hospital.

So they merrily hop in the cars and arrive in the beautiful seaside town. They wine, dine, swim, cruise in boats and enjoy the sun. Of course they all have their own petty problems with each other or themselves that need dire confrontation to be resolved.

Cotillard plays the single woman who can’t keep up a relationship; Cluzet has anger management issues; heartthrob Gilles Lellouche loves his girlfriend but can’t keep himself from philandering; Magimel is a husband and father, but he thinks he might be gay; and Laurent Lafitte has just broken off his 13-year relationship but can’t get over the ex.

We watch these very articulate and comical hedonists as they bicker with each other, find themselves in hilarious situations, occasionally have deep and meaningful conversations and rarely remember their friend at the hospital. Overall, the air is very merry! Perhaps their triviality would not be so bothersome if not for the white elephant in the room; in a film about friendship, how do you leave your dying best friend alone?

Sure they all wonder about the poor sap in the hospital, but this doesn’t stop them from enjoying the vacation even if it has disastrous moments. Thank God for the local oyster dealer, who tells them off for being so hypocritical and living in their “little white lies,” but this conversation comes towards the end of the film, when the vacation is about to come to an end.

The film requires that they go back to Paris, and they do, because this time they can’t run away from the truth of their friend’s fatal condition. Surely it’s easier to read out the tear-jerking eulogies than to sit by the side of a person in pain. What are friends for, if they can’t give a proper eulogy? I mean, it’s more important than them visiting you in the hospital, n’est-ce pas?

Canet’s film is beautifully shot and beautifully acted, but it is the core of the story that leaves us unconvinced.

Making a sweet and sunny comedy about hypocrites doesn’t work. If it were only a darker film in the sun, then perhaps everything would make sense.

‘Little White Lies’

Directed by:

Guillaume Canet

Genre: comedy, drama

Cast: François Cluzet, Marion Cotillard

Benoît Magimel