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STUDIO: Magnolia Pictures
MSRP: $26.98
RATED: R
RUNNING TIME: 94 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Featurette

The Pitch

An attorney and his bodyguard uphold the law in Monaco.

The Humans

Fabrice Luchini, Roschdy Zem and Louise Bourgoin

The Nutshell

Legal eagle Bertrand is having to defend a posh lady after she got busted stabbing her Russian boyfriend to death. His family is connected to the Russian mob and things are starting to look bad. The problem with Bertrand is that he loves the girls. His bodyguard spends most of the movie pushing the free tail around, while Bertrand tries to stay on top of his case. Most of the actors are pretty big in France, but I couldn’t recognize a single face.


Is it a chapel or a court?



The Lowdown

The Girl from Monaco is a pretty decent romantic crime caper in theory. But, the few comedic elements are stretched too thin and very few of the actors pull off the timing. While Bertrand stalks the posh Audrey, we begin entering into a second movie. The problem with that is the legal drama regarding the murder case never seems to end. It’s like flicking the television channels between Law & Order and Jersey Shore, then trying to describe the affair as one giant episode.

Louise Bourgoin is the titular character in every single meaning of the word. The problem is that she seems like a dim bulb placed against Bertrand. At times, you feel like you’re made to draw comparisons between the work of Varda and Godard. This film fails to fall into that company and Bourgoin is no Bardot. What you have is a movie based on superficial experience and lusting for something greater than it achieves. There is no legal truth, there is no dramatic purpose and the chicks aren’t even that hot.

A wise man once asked why French sex comedies aren’t funny. I have some thoughts on that matter. The central problem with such films is that the French become so obsessed with components that they lose track of the final product. No matter how sexy the dames, how intense the crime action or how beautiful the scenery…you’ve got to give a damn about the story. There’s nothing in this film that hasn’t been done better elsewhere. The only difference is that this flick did it with fewer tits.


He looks Armand Assante in a microwave.


The Package

The
DVD
comes
with a featurette about the production. Outside of that, you’ve got nothing but a couple of trailers. The A/V Quality is sharp enough for World Cinema. Still, the Dolby 5.1 track drops a lot of key dialogue during exterior scenes. It’s a good thing that we have subtitles. In regards to the film itself, it’s a Francophile fuck-up.

3.0 out of 10