A well known story,based on a true life romance which happened in a tiny principality in the south of France ,but the wedding gown ,when the princess gets to the church (on time) is inspired by another royal story .
Bubble head Princess Charlotte is to marry stiff macho prince Guillaume because duty comes first .She falls for a playboy ,Paul ,who makes love to her in a car and steals her invaluable broach he loses in a card game .Trying to make the best of it,people from the court resign themselves to a fiancé of common birth .
This little comedy is not as bad as its poor rating.Anémone is perfect as an offbeat princess who has never used a phone booth and mistakes an underground car park for the playboy's garage .She may be a dumbbell but she does know that the planned wedding is not her cup of tea.Thierry Lhermite is ideally cast as a handsome playboy,short of the readies,a band of revelers in tow .Like his noble flame ,he realizes that his so-called friends are selfish and turn their back on you when you run out of dough.
A spoof on the tabloids ,and the love stories that make humble people dream ,it lacks bite,poetry ,savor and nastiness.The lines are not witty enough ,and one can dream of what a Sacha Guitry could have done with this subject.Nevertheless ,much to their credit ,the writers do not forget to point out how much these royal amorous adventures are one of the people's best opium : to forget about unemployment or a drop in buying power,there's nothing like a good dose of dream .The movie lacks finesse,and do not expect a scene like that of the fountain in Wyler's "Roman Holiday" and too many of the gags are coarse comedy ,in this matter, the scene is the confessional takes the biscuit (but the following scene when the playboy sings the canticles in Latin redeems it);the film loses steam in its last third for that matter,and the final scene is stolen from Mike Nichols' "the graduate" .
But both leads make the movie quite entertaining.
