Hotels
are convenient locations for romantic farces.
There are plenty of doors to slam and beds to jump into. The friends of an attractive, still
relatively young widow do not think she is doing enough of the latter. They think they have a plan to help, but it
only leads to misunderstandings in Charles Nemes’ Hotel Normandy (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.
Alice
Necorre is a good friend and hard worker, but she has yet to start dating
again. Her private banking colleagues think
they have the answer. They have booked
her a long weekend in the famous luxury hotel, so she can enjoy Deauville’s
Contemporary Art Biennial. As a surprise
bonus, they have arranged (extorted) a client in arrears to whisk her off her
feet for a madcap night of passion.
Unfortunately, when illness sidelines her would-be seducer, he sends his
clumsy brother in his place.
Necorre
is having none of Yvan Carlotti and his weird mugging, especially when she meets
the sophisticated art dealer, Jacques Delboise.
She falls for him so hard, it scares her friends back home into coming
clean. Right, you can see how this will
lead to confusion. Throw in a misplaced valuable
painting and you ought to have all the elements in place.
Yet,
to a great extent, Normandy plays
like a bedroom farce made by people embarrassed by bedroom farces. It is far better at the rom than the com,
which is an unusual mix. The quiet
moments work rather nicely but its attempts at broad comedy lack the necessary
manic conviction.
Still,
it is refreshing to watch a movie romance unfold between reasonably mature and responsible
grown-ups, especially one executed with some charm. Frankly, it is great to see the scruffy
headed, slightly graying Eric Elmosnino (best known as the lead in Gainsbourg: a Heroic Life) as a leading
man. His screen chemistry with Héléna Noguerra’s Lecorre is quite
appealing. On the flip side, it is
sometimes painful watching Ary Abittan literally grin and bear it as Carlotti.
