Leonard Maltin's 151 Best Movies You've Never Seen - Maltin, Leonard [79]
What it doesn’t do is offer stock characters or easy answers to its riddling central mystery. Jerzy Kromolowski and Mary Olson-Kromolowski adapted their screenplay from the novel by noted Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt. It’s been filmed several times before, in Germany (as In Broad Daylight, in 1958 and as a 1997 TV movie), and in England (as The Cold Light of Day, in 1995), but its European sensibilities never attracted an American filmmaker until Sean Penn came along. The Pledge is the kind of movie that stays with you, precisely because it poses as many questions as it answers—and because Jack Nicholson makes such a lasting impression.
108. PRICELESS
(2006)
Directed by Pierre Salvadori
Screenplay by Benoît Graffin
Actors:
AUDREY TAUTOU
GAD ELMALEH
MARIE-CHRISTINE ADAM
VERNON DOBTCHEFF
JACQUES SPIESSER
At one time Hollywood turned out romantic comedies by the carload and made it seem effortless. Box-office figures show that audiences still crave this form of entertainment but most recent examples of the genre, with such attractive stars as Sandra Bullock, Hugh Grant, Kate Hudson, and Matthew McConaughey, are a sorry lot indeed. It’s enough to turn any critic into the oldest of fogies, complaining that “they don’t make ’em like they used to.” And it’s true.
In most romantic comedies the setup is fairly clear: we know the man and woman are going to get together at the end. The question is how, and the challenge facing the filmmaker is hiding the various story contrivances underneath a veneer of engaging byplay and action. Think of Cary Grant and Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth, or Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea in The More the Merrier. They made it look so easy.
One of the best examples of this genre I’ve seen in a long time has all the attributes of a great Hollywood movie—but it was made in France. If I were to cite one quality that sets it apart from most of its homegrown competition, it’s conviction. The actors seem to believe in the characters they’re playing, and as a result, so do we.
The actors in this case are unusually skilled. This marks the first time Audrey Tautou has had a chance to play comedy—let alone a glamorous character—since her career breakthrough in the title role of Amélie. Gad Emaleh, on the other hand, is a French favorite in comedy films, only one of which, Francis Veber’s The Valet, has made any impression in the United States.
Director Pierre Salvadori, who cowrote the film with Benoit Graffin, understands that the best comedy seems genuine, not artificial. We’re introduced to Emaleh as a hardworking staff member at an elegant resort hotel on the Riviera. He’ll do anything for a guest, without complaint. Late that night, he’s helping to straighten out the cocktail bar, wearing dress clothes instead of a servant’s uniform. Tautou, who’s sleeping with an older man in a room upstairs, slips away and goes to the bar, where she mistakes Emaleh for a fellow guest—and winds up sleeping with him in a vacant guest room! When she learns the truth she is positively horrified; you see, she’s a full-time golddigger, and has no use for a working stiff who can’t support the expensive lifestyle to which she’s grown accustomed. At the same time, her sugar daddy kicks her out.
This all occurs in the opening moments of the film; what happens next is as delightful as it is unpredictable. Emaleh is smitten with Tautou and is determined to win her, but she cannot—will not—allow sentiment or feelings to interfere with her “career.” How the lowly servant gets the upper hand in the situation is great fun to watch.
Salvadori also knows that he is taking us in the audience on a wish-fulfillment tour of how the other half lives, so Priceless gives us a generous slice of the good life that wealthy people enjoy in the