Very enjoyable movie

I saw it last night at the City of Lights-City of Angels French Film Festival with Pierre Salvadori and Nathalie Baye introducing the film and answering questions about it afterwards.

Salvadori gave a big hint to its appeal (for me) and his own intentions when he said that the 1930s directors Lubitsch and La Cava were his inspirations. The dialogue was genuinely funny, and the characters had the edgy, not-always-pure motivations that one finds in the pre-code work of those two extraordinary directors.

Nathalie, as always, was perfection, and during the Q&A, she defined her character's motivations in a way that the co-writer director (Salvadori) really wasn't able to! And, for the most part, in English! Also, almost every special moment that her character has on screen that members of the audience remarked upon turned out to be her idea!

But in fact, all of the actors were superb, and it was interesting to see the ones who normally have a more understated, realistic acting style, adopt Audrey Tautou's more out there, Hollywood-romantic-comedy acting style. This is what the director wanted in order to make the point that the film wasn't meant to be realistic. As an American, I found the fact that he felt he had to explain this, very French.

A particularly special moment to look out for (Nathalie Baye fans) is the scene in which she's feeling so happy that she dances down the street. She starts out just skipping like a child, but then the moves become balletic. I thought the director's decision to show her ballet dancer's legs in close up was curious, but also very effective. I kept thinking that if "Black Swan" had been made in France 30 years ago, Nathalie Baye (who began as a classical ballet dancer), unlike Natalie Portman, could have done all the dancing herself and there wouldn't have been a dance-double coming out and spilling the beans about who actually did all of the dancing!