Film review: Beautiful Lies

Further proof that the French are just as bad at making romantic comedies as their Hollywood counterparts, Beautiful Lies reteams Audrey Tautou with her Priceless director Pierre Salvadori for another film that seems determined to erase all memory of her beguiling breakout in Amelie.

As with Priceless, she plays another intensely dislikable romantic lead, this time a vodka-slurping, two-faced owner of a hair salon called – ahem– milie. She's also the object of desire for Jean (Sami Bouajila), a bookish, university graduate working as handyman as part of some rose-tinted desire to live a simple life.

When Jean decides to pen milie an anonymous love-letter, he's distraught to see her discard it with barely a glance. But when milie subsequently plagiarises it and sends it to her depressed mother Maddy (Nathalie Baye) in an effort to get her to snap out of her rut, it leads to catalogue of supposedly amusing complications.

That these complications mostly involve cruel deceptions being perpetrated against the characters has a tendency to sour any pleasures that should be on offer in this kind of film, especially as the characters seem to have been conceived to laugh at, rather than laugh with.