Odette dreams of thanking Balthazar Balsan, her favorite writer, for the optimism which she believes emanates from him. The wealthy and seductive writer is going to land in her life in a tot... Read allOdette dreams of thanking Balthazar Balsan, her favorite writer, for the optimism which she believes emanates from him. The wealthy and seductive writer is going to land in her life in a totally unexpected way. The story of a meeting between two unusual castaways who have nothing... Read allOdette dreams of thanking Balthazar Balsan, her favorite writer, for the optimism which she believes emanates from him. The wealthy and seductive writer is going to land in her life in a totally unexpected way. The story of a meeting between two unusual castaways who have nothing in common...
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Maybe I have the same mentality of this low class department store clerk, that is able to levitate when she experiences supreme happiness.
Why not.
As they show it in the movie, not only high brow literature can give you high pleasure. Some trash once in a while can be truly satisfying indeed. And being a great fan of Almodovar movies, this one gets quite close to his trashy school of philosophy. I loved it. I loved everything about this movie.
The main couple is so charming one would like to embrace them and tell them: I love you! This is the kind of fantasy movie that I would place next to "Miss Potter", "El laberinto del fauno" and "Les paraplues de Cherbourg", to me, masterpieces of their genre.
The musical numbers are delightful because apparently "house made" they seem spontaneous and very casual. They just happened as one would start dancing and singing at home because on the radio they started playing our favorite song.
I would recommend it to anybody of any age. This one should be called "La vie en rose"!
And now I can see why Josephine Baker was so successful in France as a singer. She was a very light soprano (the perfect voice for Snow White --no pun intended), but her rendition of these songs are simply delightful, after so many years, and as a bonus, they give you and incredible pang of nostalgia!!
Frot has a tendency to carry any film she's in. She's one of those few actors who just lights up the screen. Alas, when the camera's not on her, borderline 'good' films like this one suddenly lose a great deal of appeal. In short, if Frot weren't in this film, I'm not sure how redeemable it would be.
Frot plays Odette Toulemonde (loose translation: 'Odette Everyone/Everywhere'), a cheerful, unworldly, dreamy sales clerk who loves the sappy books of author Balthazar Balsan (Albert Dupontel, who in real life is 10 years younger than Frot). Odette writes Balthazar a letter that, in her simple way, is profound, and inspires the writer, a sophisticated, womanizing Parisian who quotes Proust, to uproot himself and suddenly appear at Odette's house in a small Belgian town. This internationally famous writer begs to stay with her. This is all highly implausible of course, but 'Odette' is a fantasy film more than anything else, so plausibility is a non-issue.
This has been called 'a feel-good' film. That might be true, but it also strains credulity to make us feel 'good'. Noticeably, after a promising first half, it begins to bog down in the second, showing its deficiencies by becoming frequently boring and clichéd (e.g. the all-too-familiar sullen, alienated daughter and the upbeat gay son). The film doesn't quite know where its focus is supposed to be. But if you're an incurable romantic, you might well overlook its flaws and love it. For me, it was worth watching just to see Catherine Frot scale the heights and conquer once more.
And I am feeling very sorry and most of all disappointed now. While the movie was clearly inspired by Amélie (to say the VERY least!), it never ever gets there. Not even close.
The story is totally made up nonsense. It's actually SO made up, the characters are SO two-dimensional and uninteresting, the whole thing is SO senseless and boring it actually started to hurt physically.
And while Audrey Tautou is just totally cute and lovable and Amélie Poulain is a multi-faceted, well constructed character, Caterine Frot - sadly - has no comedic talent whatsoever and her character Odette Toulemonde is dull, uninteresting and flat.
The acting in general is way beyond terrible, so at least it's not Caterine alone that makes this movie an epic fail in my book.
Forgive my rave, but I expected something soooo different - especially since it tries so hard to "be" Amélie. I realize, that (reading the other comments) not very much people will agree with me, but nevertheless it's how I feel.
And oh, I got a DVD for sale, if you are interested ;-)
Did you know
- TriviaThis movie is often compared to Amélie (2001), as they show common vibes.
- ConnectionsReferences Starsky and Hutch (1975)
- SoundtracksLes Mots d'Amour
Music by Virgilio Ranzato
Lyrics by Henri Varna and Pierre-Paul Fournier
Performed by Josephine Baker
Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
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- Also known as
- Odette Everybody
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Box office
- Gross worldwide
- $9,370,520
- Runtime1 hour 40 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1