Apres Vous is the story of two men, one a hectic headwaiter living in a state of romantic suspension with his girlfriend, the other a depressed individual of indeterminate occupation having a hard time living after dumping his own significant other. Their acquaintanceship begins in a way befitting two characters in a French romantic-comedy: Antoine, the headwaiter, finds himself crossing a deserted park at night, the same park Louis the head-case has chosen as the site for his last moments on earth; discovering Louis dangling from a tree, Antoine aids the unfortunate man, rescuing him from his self-inflicted coup de grace, while managing simultaneously to placate his own girlfriend, Christine, who is waiting with dinner for him at their apartment (ah the wonders of the cell-phone). Inordinately sympathetic toward the depressed Louis' plight, Antoine brings the poor man home. This sets off a chain of events that will draw Antoine ever deeper into Louis' miserable existence, bringing him face-to-face with the woman responsible for breaking Louis' heart, an ethereal florist named Blanche, who has romantic problems of her own, and becomes yet another beneficiary of the increasingly discombobulated Antoine's misguided altruism.
European films are often preoccupied with the strange, co-incidental ways in which people's fates become intertwined, but instead of mining this theme for a sense of existential wonder, like Kieslowski, director Pierre Salvadori goes a more conventional direction, turning in a breezy, somewhat darkly-shaded comedy in the tradition of Woody Allen, where there are enough ideas floating around to keep the viewer's mind engaged, but the tone never becomes really intellectual, and the neuroses rarely become extreme enough to engender the kind of dramatic gravity that might bring down the farce, the romantic escapades, the light-comic esprit. The characters may have serious mental issues, especially Louis who is a candidate for a psycho-ward, but Salvadori never takes them that seriously; he fixes the semi-frivolous tone early in the film, when Antoine comes across Louis hanging from the tree branch, and has to converse with Christine on the phone at the same time he's trying to rescue the strangling man. This scene could be straight out of Woody Allen, and frankly so could a lot of the rest of the movie, like the scene where Antoine takes Louis to his aged grandparents' place to intercept the letter he's sent them, telling them of his imminent suicide; or the sequence where Antoine helps Louis get work as a sommelier at the restaurant, and Louis is completely hapless, clinging to the flustered Antoine's coat-tails while worrying the light fixtures are doing to drop on his head. The trick is all in the handling, in keeping the farce from becoming so broad that it shatters the reality of the characters, but putting it across strongly enough that we're amused by what's happening in a way that isn't too abstract (the scenes are funny, not just the ideas, like in a lot of French "comedy"). Salvadori and his cast prove themselves adept at this brand of comedy, which is silly but not too silly, smart but not too smart, dark but not too dark. Daniel Auteuil, the French De Niro, uses his tender eyes to great effect in playing Antoine, who is much more anxiety-ridden than he's letting on, while Jose Garcia employs a natural, understated sad-sack quality in playing Louis as a whimpering, panic-stricken mess. The object of Antoine and Louis' mutual affection, Blanche, is portrayed by Sandrine Kiberlain (think Gwyneth Paltrow without the haughtiness) as a free-spirit with a weakness for hooking up with the wrong man, whose porcelain skin and tragic eyes prove an irresistible, if off-beat, combination.
Like a lesser Woody Allen film, Apres Vous works well enough without ever reaching critical mass. The plot is perhaps too neatly symmetrical, too schematic to allow real comic or emotional fireworks to go off; or perhaps it's just that Pierre Salvadori is the kind of director who's content to generate only a mild energy, who, like Allen, is happy breezing toward a logical resolution, and doesn't feel the need to press matters very much. Either way, Apres Vous is successful on the terms it sets, which are modest.
European films are often preoccupied with the strange, co-incidental ways in which people's fates become intertwined, but instead of mining this theme for a sense of existential wonder, like Kieslowski, director Pierre Salvadori goes a more conventional direction, turning in a breezy, somewhat darkly-shaded comedy in the tradition of Woody Allen, where there are enough ideas floating around to keep the viewer's mind engaged, but the tone never becomes really intellectual, and the neuroses rarely become extreme enough to engender the kind of dramatic gravity that might bring down the farce, the romantic escapades, the light-comic esprit. The characters may have serious mental issues, especially Louis who is a candidate for a psycho-ward, but Salvadori never takes them that seriously; he fixes the semi-frivolous tone early in the film, when Antoine comes across Louis hanging from the tree branch, and has to converse with Christine on the phone at the same time he's trying to rescue the strangling man. This scene could be straight out of Woody Allen, and frankly so could a lot of the rest of the movie, like the scene where Antoine takes Louis to his aged grandparents' place to intercept the letter he's sent them, telling them of his imminent suicide; or the sequence where Antoine helps Louis get work as a sommelier at the restaurant, and Louis is completely hapless, clinging to the flustered Antoine's coat-tails while worrying the light fixtures are doing to drop on his head. The trick is all in the handling, in keeping the farce from becoming so broad that it shatters the reality of the characters, but putting it across strongly enough that we're amused by what's happening in a way that isn't too abstract (the scenes are funny, not just the ideas, like in a lot of French "comedy"). Salvadori and his cast prove themselves adept at this brand of comedy, which is silly but not too silly, smart but not too smart, dark but not too dark. Daniel Auteuil, the French De Niro, uses his tender eyes to great effect in playing Antoine, who is much more anxiety-ridden than he's letting on, while Jose Garcia employs a natural, understated sad-sack quality in playing Louis as a whimpering, panic-stricken mess. The object of Antoine and Louis' mutual affection, Blanche, is portrayed by Sandrine Kiberlain (think Gwyneth Paltrow without the haughtiness) as a free-spirit with a weakness for hooking up with the wrong man, whose porcelain skin and tragic eyes prove an irresistible, if off-beat, combination.
Like a lesser Woody Allen film, Apres Vous works well enough without ever reaching critical mass. The plot is perhaps too neatly symmetrical, too schematic to allow real comic or emotional fireworks to go off; or perhaps it's just that Pierre Salvadori is the kind of director who's content to generate only a mild energy, who, like Allen, is happy breezing toward a logical resolution, and doesn't feel the need to press matters very much. Either way, Apres Vous is successful on the terms it sets, which are modest.