Wonderful character development!

One of my all time favorites.

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

"I Do" is an enjoyable, if flawed film. It's far from a great French film but you could certainly do worse and it's a decent date night movie.Luis is the only male in his family now that his father has died. The sisters and mother announce one day that they are tired of him being a bachelor in his 40s and he MUST get married ASAP. So, they begin setting him up with all sorts of women. They even go online and chat up women...pretending to be Luis himself! Not surprisingly, he wants them to leave him alone and sabotages each of these set-ups...after all, Luis is a rather shallow guy and LIKES living the swinging single life. But finally, out of exhaustion with their tactics, he decides to outsmart them. He pays Emma to pretend to be his fiancée and the plan is to eventually have her leave him at the alter...thus freeing him up, at least for a while, from his family's interference. Where all this goes is very predictable--and even though there had been NO CHEMISTRY WHATSOEVER between Luis and Emma, by the end of the film, suddenly and inexplicably they decide to REALLY marry! But as I said, this comes with little warning and the build-up is unrealistically short. Stretching the story out a bit and giving more hints that they were falling in love would have made sense. As for Emma, she NEVER showed any signs and Luis only very near the end...which really hurt the film. It made is seem formulaic and very unrealistic.For a very similar plot but with it being much better made, try "Bollywood/Hollywood"...a wonderful film with pretty much the same premise. However, it is handled much better and is a much more romantic comedy.

In Paris, the forty-three year-old Luis "Pipou" Costa (Alain Chabat) is a immature bachelor and successful creator of perfumes and does not have any intention to get married. However, his oppressive family that is ruled by six women - his mother Geneviève Costa (Bernadette Lafont) and his sisters Catherine (Véronique Barrault), Axelle (Marie-Armelle Deguy), Carole (Katia Lewkowicz), Maxine (Louise Monot)and Marie (Luce Mouchel) decide that Luis shall get married and they try to find a wife for him among their friends.When Luis is having lunch with his best friend Pierre-Yves (Grégoire Oestermann), he learns that his regular waitress is depressed and not working because her fiancé left her a couple of days before their wedding. Luis plots a scheme to hire a woman to pose as his fiancée and to leave him on the day of their marriage in order that his family does not bother him anymore. He hires Pierre's sister Emmanuelle "Emma" (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who is trying to adopt a child from Brazil, to be his bride-to-be and to leave him at the altar on the day of their wedding. However his plan fails since his family loves Emma and when she does not show up to marry him, his mother has to go to the hospital and his sisters blame him. Now Luis hires Emma again to act like a bitch to make his family hate her. Meanwhile Luis falls in love with Emma and when his plan works and Emma leaves him, he misses her. Would it be too late for him to declare his love for Emma? "Prête-moi ta main" is a delightful romantic comedy with an entertaining story, funny situations and very well acted. The charming, elegant and beautiful Charlotte Gainsbourg is one of my favorite actresses and I loved to see her in a light movie after several Lars von Triers features. The characters are interesting and we can see the stingy guy, the family that likes to snoop and interfere in the life of the members and an independent woman that is the opposite of the other women. In the end, "Prête-moi ta main" is a French comedy that will make your day (or night) better. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "A Noiva Perfeita" ("The Perfect Bride")

I love romantic comedies. I love French cinema. Charlotte Gainsbourg was fine in Claude Miller's La Petite Voleuse. But since then, her charmless personality seems to be the death-knell for everything she touches.This is a theoretically fun movie, in which a middle-aged guy tries to get one over on his domineering family. And, being a romantic comedy, we know the way it's going to go. But Gainsbourg seems so affected as the hired-in fiancée, and so emotionally wooden, that even if she had the 'nichons' that her partner would have preferred (as I would), it is doubtful that she would have saved this forlorn if not totally lost film.

Alain Chabat is a fine actor, writer and director but maybe a trifle misguided to take an 'idea' credit for a story that probably had them rolling in the aisles when Aristophanes was still learning that it's 'i' before 'e' except after 'c'. But, like I said, Chabat is a fine actor and he can do charm when he needs to. I'm also gradually overcoming an aversion to Charlotte Gainsbourg who also turns in an accomplished performance. If you absolutely insist on knowing, the 'plot' is the one about the guy well into his forties and more than content to be single. This doesn't sit well with his mother and five sisters and to get them off his back he makes an 'arrangement' with the sister of a colleague to pose - for fifteen thousand euros -as his new girlfriend, allow the romance to come to fruition with a wedding and then jilt him, thus getting him off the hook. Naturally they wind up together but along the way there's some sub-Benedek and Beatrice duelling and all things considered it's a pretty painless ninety minutes and performing so well at the French box office that a sequel may not be out of the question.