Love, Math and Sex

The title has a double meaning:the heroin likes tangent best because she's in love with maths.But her family is so wretched that she wants to make off (=prendre la tangente).

Nothing to get hung about though:the umpteenth story of young high school girl who falls in love with a forty-something brimming with Slavonic charm.Except for the numerous erotic scenes,that could fit the bill for such "nice" French made-for-TV series ,the likes of "Madame le Proviseur".Directing remains academic,and acting conventional,as far the two leads are concerned.

Interest lies elsewhere:Marie-Christine Barrault is very convincing as a generous maths teacher;Agnès Soral and mainly classy Malavoy are cast against type as two proles always fearing the bailiff.Too bad the relationship whizz kid heroine/ moronic parents is only skimmed over.

The dialogue,when it does not integrate maths in its lines remains trite and dull.But when the heroine says that her " derivative" turns negative that her lover is her "vector" or when she uses the probability in her father's problems it's pretty original.

If I remember well,the curve of the tangent function sometimes.tends towards infinity whereas the cosine one endlessly goes up and down:that's why I'd rather have cosine to describe this movie which fluctuates between bad and good.