Mauvaise passe

A French academic, in a mid life crisis, comes to London to write a book but - through an accident of fate - starts earning money as a part-time male escort.

A film that is well constructed (clear-cut beginning, middle and end) and gives a fair impression of London's famous Soho area. Daniel Auteuil (Pierre)also gives a sense of sexual innocence that his 40 years on earth would surely have wiped out if he was for real!

Entertaining as it is, the whole thing comes across as being too easy and pat (even a far-too-young-for-him prostitute wants his sex). Indeed everyone seems eager to help our newly arrived hero, who tries to keep in touch with his former life in Paris by way of fractured phone conversation. Here we have pure broken marriage cliché and is the weakest part of the movie.

The sex is tasteful and erotic, but a lot of his clients are too good looking to be true and you would have to be very good at this style of work to afford a docklands apartment. There is also a little bit of drug taking and drug dealing which is seen as background detail and not moralised over.

Despite its London base (it is Brit/French production) this film is far more French than it is British. Whether you find this a good thing or a bad thing is up to you. I find it a good thing, although it could do with being a bit less poefaced and either cutting out his life-back-home or explaining what went wrong with it in detail.

Worth your time if you want a pleasant character study of a man adjusting to a new life style rather than the sex romp the poster might be suggesting.