Frenchflix and chill

I turned to Netflix for language support and I ended up watching what probably is the best romantic comedy of the year.

Went to Netflix to watch something in French and ended up rooting for Omar Sy and Sara Giraudau in a French take on Notting Hill.

Blame it on the fact that the past few weeks I have been involved in a lot of conversations in French, sometimes with more success than others depending on whether champagne was on offer, but I am resolved to master the language of Molière comme il faut.

Ths is not my first French rodeo and in fact for the best part of the past 20 years I’ve been in an on-off relationship with French.

After years of pain and suffering trying to make sense of exchanges that consisted of a string of monosyllabic bah, hein, bref, euh, ouf, and ouais -with the occasional and slightly more elaborate chais pas and du coup randomly thrown in- I now find great pleasure in employing those same words when I want to be part of a conversation in a meaningful way. Because you see, learning a language is not only about the words but also the vision of the world it comes with it. And the way the French have of conveying meaning succinctly is something I find very refreshing.

Much of my linguistic progress in recent years has been in no small part thanks to structured learning at the Institute Français here in London. However, given the astronomic price of in-person language courses, I can’t always afford to part with a small fortune to spend two hours with a group of retired adults with a second home in Provence as we slowly kill the French language one mistake at a time while our teacher is paid to bear witness in silence.

Instead, I’ve decided to go back to a method that allows me to be exposed to French in a wide range of accents, formal and informal settings, and which allows me to listen to any mistakes from the comfort of my home at a fraction of the cost. I am of course talking about Netflix.

As someone who keeps a subscription mostly because it is one of the few platforms which has content in different languages, I’ve learned that the greater the desire to find something to watch in anything other than English, the harder Netflix will hide it from you. This is because when you’re based in the UK you are by default bombarded by British and American content mostly, so while I’d rather ignore Love is Blind, it’s always there on the home screen for me to see when I log in. The irony isn’t lost on me.

The key to finding what you want in Netflix, especially outside its Anglo-centric algorithm, is to be specific and type either the name of a show or an actor and then take it from there. The magic words I go for today are Omar Sy. It turns out I am lucky, or j’ai de la chance as the French would say, as there is a new film with him, French Lover, that was released a couple of weeks ago and of which Netflix has kept me in the dark. Bastards, sorry I mean mais quels cons.

Within the first five minutes it is clear that this is a French take on Notting Hill with Omar Sy playing the role of Abel Camara, a world-famous actor unfulfilled with his career despite being coveted by Hollywood producers, and who at the tender age of 40 also happens to be a bit of a playboy.

Can I just say that casting Omar Sy for this role is a true coup de génie?

If you’re making a French Notting Hill of sorts, he is the only male French actor nowadays¹ who can convincingly carry this role, not only because of his actual superstar status or imposing physique, but most importantly because coming from a comedy background, he shines in roles where he can be playful and not take himself too seriously. French Lover, in case its title didn’t make it obvious, allows him plenty of opportunities to do just that.

The opening scene is a very tongue-in-cheek wink, even in the way it’s shot, to a real deodorant ad that was extremely popular² when it came out a few years ago. I bet Sy had a good laugh shooting it. It is a simple yet very effective way to set the tone and what to expect of his performance as this scene establishes who Abel Camara is and how he doesn’t shy away from showing some skin and turning up the charm to captive the audience.

In fact, this may be the sexiest Sy has ever been on screen. While his debut in such a role may not turn him into a romantic lead overnight, it has given him a chance to show he can be convincing when the part demands a softer but also seductive side to be on display.

So we have our Julia Roberts but what about our Hugh Grant?

I was coming to that if you only let me type.

Sara Giraudeau stars opposite Sy in the role of Marion, a down-to-earth woman who dreams of opening a food truck after having said goodbye to the restaurant business she shared with her ex-husband following their recent divorce. She is an equally inspired choice and a perfect match to counterbalance the overpowering onscreen presence of Sy in a way that doesn’t feel contrived.

Unlike the occasionally helpless and often mumbling Will played by Grant in Notting Hill, who at times was exasperatingly restrained in his affections, blinded by the megastardom of Robert’s Anna Scott, Marion may occasionally dip his foot into self-doubt but ultimately she has clear ideas about who she is and what she wants. Her character brings the right dose of common sense, pragmatism and emotion to the table to keep Sy’s real and fictional charisma in check and dim his mega-watt smile a notch in a credible way.

Despite sharing a similar premise with Notting Hill, French Lover presents a more realistic view of relationships and puts its protagonists on a more level playing field. In part because the French are a lot less celebrity-obsessed and even regard fame with a hint of contempt, as something to be secretly ashamed of, but also due to the maturity of the characters in the film, who are in their 40s as opposed to the late 20s-mid 30s age range most romantic comedies seem to favour.

Personally I consider When Harry Met Sally the genre golden standard and I believe the fact that Nora Ephron, a woman with lived experience, was behind the screenplay has much to do with it. I am aware such gems that manage to capture both the humour and the romance so effortlessly while giving us multidimensional characters are the exception, not the rule, and I often wonder if it is because they lack a woman’s outlook on relationships. Therefore, French Lover being the debut of Nina Rives, who has also co-written the script with husband Hugo Gélin, has managed to infuse a breath of fresh air into a difficult genre to get right.

To begin with because the circumstances of Abel and Marion’s meeting in French Lover are far more plausible than those in Notting Hill or your average Hollywood/Anglo-centric romantic comedy.

In fact, in France, like in most Southern European countries, sociability is engrained in one’s DNA. Therefore, the French national sport is prendre un café/verre, a pleasure often paired with smoking a cigarette as anyone who’s ever been to Paris can confirm. Very conveniently, then, our protagonists meet inside a bar where the character played by Sy enters to find a bit of respite and the character played by Giraudeau happens to be the waitress that takes his order.

Par contre, I have yet to see a significant enough number of Hollywood actors desperate to visit bookshops regularly anywhere in the world they happen to be for it to be a credible meet cute scenario.

If I learned anything from the multiple rewatches of Dix pour Cent (Call My Agent) is that French actors are always delighted for an opportunity to meet their agent at the restaurant or bar, already waiting for them in lieu, or bumping into each other by chance when they go separately so spotting a French cinema legend enjoying un petit café in company or on their own is not an unusual sighting in Paris.

In fact, this is how my sister found out that Laetitia Casta had already had a baby with Louis Garrel³ before the newspapers caught wind of the news.

She happened to take a seat next to her at a terrasse where Casta was already installed with Garrel and their newborn baby latched to one of her breasts. “They’re both incredibly hot, by the way. It should be illegal for people to be that sexy. It’s embarrassing how ugly the rest of us are around them by comparison,” she said in the voice note she sent me when she sneaked out to the toilet to give me the scoop and check her face hadn’t suffered any real alterations after the unexpected collision with a former top model turned actress and his equally genetically blessed actor/director partner.

The genetically blessed Louis Garrel and Latetitia Casta

If French Lover were a Hollywood film, this interaction inside the bar between the main characters would play in an awkward but ultimately nice/sexy/funny manner where we can already see the sparks flying and start rooting for them to get together already.

Something like the beginning of Anyone But You, which I’ve recently got around watching, a film which received much media attention back in 2024 in part for bringing back romantic comedies to the big screen but also due to the speculation surrounding Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney and which eventually Powell admitted was a clever PR ruse devised by Sweeney to attract viewers⁴. While Anyone But You is less terrible than I feared, it is nonetheless a very forgettable and insipid regurgitation of Much Ado About Nothing despite the amount of saccharine and spice that has been forced-fed into the script to make it palatable.⁵

We are fortunate, therefore, French Lover is not such an atrocity and that its premise is grounded in less hyperbolic and in-your-face romantic gestures and anchored in more subtlety and restrain, which reflects how French people and the language itself express appreciation. For you see, in French people don’t openly say something is good, that’d be pretentious, embarrassing almost. Instead they say pas terrible. When something is actually really good, they will resort to the more extravagant vraiement pas mal.

I’m indeed impressed the French cast of Emily in Paris, where the awesomes are a dime a dozen to refer to anything from food to how the job is going or the skills of French men under the sheets, has made it four full seasons without any major health incidents because all that gratuitous praise can lead to serious brain damage over time. I hear season 5 is currently shooting in Venice. I’m sure the Italians will welcome the opportunity of being stereotyped as awesome latin lovers for a change while the French will be happy to take a break from being at the receiving end of such embarrassment.

Truth has been spoken

Given French Lover is not a Hollywood film, after our protagonists engage in a short exchange where their two separate worlds collide they don’t look at each other with starry eyes and silly smiles, ready to spend the next 90 minutes sheepisly frolicking. Instead, they double-down on their Frenchness and proceed to display two of the most French traits par excellence as they quickly engage in a well coordinated exercise where one of them has a rant and complains while the other complains and then has a rant.

The exchanges finishes with Marion quitting her job because at this point elle s’en fout, which is French for she’s ready to move on and do something else with her life. So far so parfait. If there had been someone on strike for whatever made up reason, this could have been sublime but let’s not be greedy.

It’s not even ten minutes into the film and I am already impressed.

Am I watching the romantic comedy of the year? On Netflix? In French?

It may be a bit too early to sing victory, but at least I’m finally seeing a film with two adults where the meet cute is realistic enough as to be something that could actually happen to me. Might already have in fact. Because if I met an attractive and available man at a safe public place who of his own free will engages in neutral or even friendly conversation with me in a non-threatening way, I’ll probably complain about it and then have a rant about how impossible it is for a woman to mind her own bloody business without being bothered by an agent of the patriarchy, no matter how good looking he is and how single I am.

Without giving too much away, the relationship dynamic between Marion and Abel seems rather plausible given their fictional circumstances.

Like any of us if we found ourselves regularly sharing a bed with someone a few places higher up in the attractiveness pyramid and with a bit of a fuckboy reputation, she understandably questions why someone who makes women salivate when he steps into a room is with her, who in comparison to the women he’s dated, including a very attractive ex who happens to be the lead in his new project, isn’t as visually enchanting at first glance. The reality is that Marion possesses buckets of charm in Abel’s eyes precisely because, and I apologise to every woman reading this in advance for what is coming next, she isn’t like any other woman he has met before⁶.

From the outset Marion is quite unfazed by the whole celebrity paraphernalia that surrounds Abel. Marion’s character shows this clearly during a scene that will act as a catalyst for the events of the film’s third act and in which Abel behaves like a spoilt brat after learning he’s secured only a supporting role, instead of the lead he was hoping to land, in a film with a critically acclaimed director he wants to work with as a way to steer his career into a new direction. Marion is taken aback by Abel’s childish reaction and provides much needed perspective -as well as a good dressing down- into what is a privileged life that is almost never questioned up close by anyone outside that secluded circle and echo chamber that fame has built around Abel.

Her clearheadedness and pragmatism, healthy links with her support network, self-assuredness, and her ability to walk away from situations that aren’t good for her is what makes of Marion the modern romantic comedy heroine we need to see more often on screen. Think everything Dakota Johnson is not in Materialists⁷ and you get the picture.

In fact, let’s take a moment to talk about Materialists and the massive disappointment it has been.

Perhaps the reason why it was hyped as the romantic comedy of the year is to be found in the success of Celine Song’s excellent directorial debut Past Lives, which while not being a romantic comedy per se explored love and longing with such perfection that many started to look at Song as the breath of fresh air the genre had been waiting for. When the news broke that Song was working on a romantic comedy for which she had also wrote the screenplay based on her own experience working as a matchmaker, the stakes were very high and many expected Materialists would be, without a doubt, a new blueprint for romantic comedies.

Hence the shock of it being a shallow story where a woman with the emotional intelligence and agency levels of a cobblestone is -for reasons that defy human understanding and a rock’s affection capabilities- attracted to two men who would have been far more convincing as romantic leads if only they had been allowed to date each other instead.

Suffice to say Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman as a married couple who wants to kill each other in the remake of The Roses have more chemistry (and banter) than the apathetic and implausible love triangle formed by Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans in Materialists.

Without giving too much away, I have enjoyed French Lover more than I expected and will be watching it again. The insider’s eye on celebrity culture and the cinema industry and the secondary characters add an extra layer to the way the Abel and Marion move into the world and their outlook on relationships.

After a quick look at the first reviews I can see why some critics (mostly youngish, mostly English speakers whose expectations of romance may have been moulded by the in-your-face swooning Hollywood loves so much) are not convinced by French Lover as a romantic comedy on account of his perceived lack of romance, which I disagree with.

It has it on the right doses if you take into account the characters aren’t your standard bubbly 20 something Anglo-centric leads but two people with fully formed personalities (and emotional baggage) who have a very different cultural outlook on life and relationships and yet are open-minded about what life has to offer in the love deparment. That, believe it or not, is where the real romance is for it’s incredibly hard not to become a bloody cynic when you’re single after your mid 30s.

I’d even say French Lover is perhaps the best romantic comedy I’ve seen this year. Without reinventing the wheel nor subverting too much the status quo, it manages to be both a comedy and have two leads with obvious chemistry who don’t need to be all over each other to prove their attraction to the spectator. Less is always more, especially in French.

The real highlight of French Lover for me is the character of Marion, brilliantly brought to life by Sara Giraudeau’s subtle and natural rendition, an actress I wasn’t familiar with but who I’ll make sure to keep an eye on.

Unlike Will in Notting Hill, who wants to shag Anna just as much as the other men even if he’s better at hiding it under all that mumbling, Marion knows better. She is fully aware that no man, no matter how famous he is or how much it makes you want to send feminism back a few centuries with the filthy thoughts he inspires in you, or precisely because of that, is worth your peace of mind. Especially if what you want in life is going to come second every time.

So when Abel’s career finally takes a new turn -thanks in fact to Marion’s support- and he starts behaving like a little diva, instead of gaslighting herself and making more excuses for him, she says tu me fais chier, putain. Which roughly translates as enough is enough. You can spot the hand of a woman in the script because no man would allow her heroine to willingly leave his romantic hero stranded without consequence.

I may be reading too much into what is essentially just a necessary plot device to keep things interesting and not give away the end too soon, which is as predictable as you can imagine. Marion’s self-affirmation, however, is a step towards a new direction in a genre that, with the exception of Nora Ephron, has been traditionally defined by patriarchal views on love.

And can’t a girl dream with a romantic comedy heroine who isn’t afraid to say j’en marre, foute-moi la paix and chooses herself when things don’t work anymore even when she’s bedding a walking erotic dream? Moi, I think that’s what writers and directors should represent more often on screen in order to keep up with how women’s expectations of romantic relationships, and what they’re willing to sacrifice for them, have evolved.

Who knows, maybe the key to the survival of romantic comedies is to embrace the French understated and more down-to-earth approach to the genre and have female leads with well-rounded personalities (and not only tits⁸) who don’t lower their standards just to be with someone, no matter how much he thinks he is hot shit. Perhaps this would help us all develop more realistic expectations about relationships and love as a result.

Now that would be vraiement pas mal indeed and Nora Ephron could at last stop revolving in her tomb.

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Abroad is an independent publication about London, living in between cultures, creativity, and being human in the age of artificial intelligence.

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1. Jean Dujardin is arguably the other male French actor of equal standing and he could have been a good choice had French Lover been shot a few years ago, but given the character of Abel Camara is 40, Sy is a more natural fit.

2. At least in Spain and I bet also in France given this opening scene.

3. The pair announced their divorce this summer. Another blow for French cinema royalty after the breakup of Guillaume Canet and Marion Cotillard earlier in the year.

4. Any respect I had for Glen Powell as an actor vanished the moment I read this. Shifting any responsibility to her female co-start is such a shitty move. Especially when he was a full grown up man who at the time of the rumours was in a long-term relationship and yet preferred to play into the speculation (of his own will) to favour his film rather than publicly clarify the situation out of respect for his partner’s feelings. This is not the romantic lead I am paying money for because I’m tired of seeing the likes of him getting away with their mountain of shit.

5. Word of advice to avoid disappointment when it comes to either Shakespeare or Jane Austen film adaptations: Stick to one with either Kenneth Branagh or Emma Thompson.

6. To the men: this doesn’t have the effect you think it does.

7. I really wanted to like Materialists and I may be judging it harsher than anyone who hasn’t watched Past Lives and therefore has nothing to compare Celine Song’s second film with. Maybe in a few years’ time I’ll be mentally ready to watch it again with fresh eyes.

8. By the way, as the owner of a pair of tits, nothing against them, round or otherwise.