Doces Mentiras

My review was written in November 1989 after watching the movie on CBS/Fox video cassette.

After three years on the shelf, "Sweet Lies" emerges in video stores as a pleasant but dated romantic comedy of the sort popular 20 years ago.

Treat Williams toplines rather self-consciously as an insurance company snop who pursues hhis quarry, a guy faking an injury who's in an unnecessary wheelchair, to Paris. There three gorgeous young women are immediately spellbound by Williams. The elder two (Joanna Pacula, Julianne Phillips) make a bet over which one can bed him, all to impress the youngest (Laura Manszky).

That's the entire plot line, a slim hook for actress-turned-director Nathalie Delon to hang a feature film on. Along he way there's some minor slapstick, the usual romantic complications and pretty location scenery. Williams' indulgent impressions of James Cagney and Robert De Nio are less appetizing, however.

Femme cast members do little more than look pretty. Film's key drawing card probably is Robert Palmer's sinuous title song, endlessly repeated.

Here's why....

No way was I going to stay up late to watch The Witching Hour, so I inserted a new 3 hour cassette (for the 30 minute feature), pressed record on the VCR and dozed off... The next day, I watched it, liked it.. but being the couch potato I am, there's no way I was going to reach for the remote, so I left the tape running.. discovering Sweet Lies.

I found it quite interesting. Plot sounds lame, insurance investigator stalking this fraud guy, gets in a love triangle with two french women.. pfft. Yet I found myself laughing at some of the most unfunny scenes in cinematic history ~ (Joelle glueing her foot to the floor, the fraud's prune of a wife attacking him with a golf club, the fraud's french lover who lets strangers into her house, the french grandma who likes to sit on park benches in her dressing gown at night, etc..) Treat Williams was a bit wooden, but the leading ladies performed quite nicely. I esp. liked the character of Lisa (played by Mary-Louise Parker lookalike Laura Manszky), she was quite funny, cool French accent. Is she actually French?

Ignoring a few characters like that boxer Mersault & Dixie's pigheaded brother Claude (who needs to learn how to act NOW!), will help you enjoy it a little bit more. Set in Paris, it seems as though it was filmed in a different French city, although I could be wrong.

Since viewing Sweet Lies, I've grown a higher respect for the obscure/independent movie industry and plan to devote more time to these than to the box-office successes. I guess that means I'm off to the Dendy Independent Film cinemas at Newtown, I'll have to tolerate the urine smell.

Thanks, Sweet Lies!! 6/10

This film's failure to entertain rests in writer/director Nathalie Delon's choices. She assembled a cast of young and desirable female beauties which would make most any healthy male salivate like Pavlov's dog (Joanna Pacula, Julianne Phillips, Laura Mansky, Aïna Walle, Caroline Ducrocq and others), but then attempts to rely on her thin and totally unbelievable storyline and screenplay, sophomoric direction and pedestrian cinematography to attempt to eek-out a bona-fide hour and a half of entertainment. Ouch! This one was actually painful to watch.

Delon had all the necessary ingredients at her disposal for creating a good 'Erotic Light Drama' which would have run on late night cable for decades, but instead she tried for 'Romantic Comedy', and completely failed. All she needed to do was eliminate about 1/2 of the dialog, and remove 3/4 of the clothing.

She opted for having her delicious female characters talk, rather than having them cavorting and walking around 'nekkid'. Big mistake! This 93-minute film could have been salvaged with about 80 minutes of purely gratuitous sex and nudity, and about 13 minutes of plot and dialog to tie the nudity and sex scenes together. How sad. Such a waste of gorgeous, umm, ... 'talent'.

I score this one "1 star" (awful), for its wasted potential.