De Caunes, as usual, delivers a convincing performance. And his character isn't exactly coherent. Carole Bouquet, stunningly beautiful as always, does indeed have an important role (I disagree on that with "jotix100" on his IMDb reviewer which, by the way, tells you the plot). Her diction is not the most clear for us who know French as a foreign language, but that really doesn't matter much :). Aurélien Recoing has a funny little role as the physician, reminding us that even in Switzerland and with money, there's something hard to swallow with the profession :). Lorit's Lucas is fine, but somewhat grey, not very convincing. He was gay, then he (can't tell you more). Why? Nothing. Sex toy "Marlene" is also erratic, she shifts moods as we could sneeze under all that snow. Near the end she disappears, no trace of her, no explanation why. Then we have Mme. Monti (Maria Cristina Mastrangeli !), who's way too friendly and risks her job for... what? Too many plot holes, that's surely bad direction/ story, not the cast's fault. Hot Marlene has a couple of "explicit" scenes (for a normal film) totally irrelevant in the plot, but that must be important for some people, given they appear as "plot keywords" of this movie :). "Fully Clothed Sex", "woman on top", "panties", "sex in chair"... Come'on. Weren't this film Swiss :), nobody would be paying attention to the otherwise rather straightforward sex of a "bourgeois guy who wants to get a little kinky".
Charming Marie France Pisier, who played "Iris" on the TV series "Clara Scheller", here has a much more reflexive and subdued role, also very well. The characters I really love from this flick are the Lelièvre brothers. Sleazy, fake, dangerous, they make us realize how easy is to be tricked when dealing with gangsters. And the film itself is a cautionary tale of sorts. Not a very good one, a bit formulaic and stereotyped. But it's engaging, with enough plot twists and not too many characters so as to help us not getting lost in this convoluted story. For instance: "Anna is seeing somebody", then he must be somebody we already know. "Somebody is dead" = the same (who could it be :)?).
Switzerland looks gorgeous but uninviting. Cold, wary, not at all friendly. But very beautiful to look at! Of course, it's rich man's Switzerland. It's funny how the bad weather is so prominent, always snowing and cold, that at a moment Julien says: "I want to see the sun, a blue sky!" (as "the" symbol of "an easy way out").
Enjoy unpretentious entertainment, keeps your brain active.
PS: Given there's another, older movie called "Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien", and there the title is totally to the point, very ironical, and intelligently chosen, I think they should have used another one.
