Throughout this movie, I kept thinking "If this were made in Hollywood, it would be very different, and very bad." It is the story of a man who abandons his own life to worship several stars of French cinema. In Hollywood he could have been portrayed as a caricature, a clown. In this movie, though he is often presented as funny, he is also presented as a very disturbed man who has reacted very poorly to the disintegration of his own romantic life with his live-in companion and their child.
The "stars" whose lives he decides to direct, Catherine Deneuve and Emanuelle Béart, are sometimes presented as downright mean. They are presented, at times, as caricatures of how the French public imagines them.
But Kad Merad's character - he's a very fine and very versatile actor - is not reduced to a caricature. He's a man with psychological problems that need to be addressed professionally, and while that is often presented with a sense of humor, it is never made fun of.
This is not a great movie. But it's a good one, and definitely worth seeing. Several fine actors turn it into a real pleasure.
The "stars" whose lives he decides to direct, Catherine Deneuve and Emanuelle Béart, are sometimes presented as downright mean. They are presented, at times, as caricatures of how the French public imagines them.
But Kad Merad's character - he's a very fine and very versatile actor - is not reduced to a caricature. He's a man with psychological problems that need to be addressed professionally, and while that is often presented with a sense of humor, it is never made fun of.
This is not a great movie. But it's a good one, and definitely worth seeing. Several fine actors turn it into a real pleasure.
