Secondhand Love
'Aprés Vous' a well-played, but lightweight romantic farce

Versatile French actor Daniel Auteuil can play anything, from the tragic lovestruck simpleton in Jean de Florette to the caustic, knife-throwing romantic hero in Girl On The Bridge. In his lesser moments, Auteuil is also adept at farce, and one of those lesser moments is Aprés Vous (After You), a whipped meringue of a romantic comedy about food, wine, and l'amour.

Directed by Pierre Salvadori, the film stars Auteuil as Antoine, busy alpha waiter at a trendy Paris restaurant. Unflappable Antoine lets his work consume him, lingering on long past his shifts to cover for other staff and keep the customers happy. One night, an hour late for dinner with his girlfriend, Antoine takes a short cut through the park and blunders into an attempted suicide by hapless stranger Louis (José Garcia), despondent after being dumped by his own girlfriend. Afraid to leave Louis alone, Antoine brings him home to the apartment Antoine shares with his nonplussed sweetie, Christine (Marilyn Canto). Unable to find any other friends or family to take Louis in, Antoine gets one of his customers, a police inspector, to track down Louis' ex, Blanche (Sandrine Kiberlain), working in a nearby flower shop, hoping to patch things up between them.

This is mostly a comedy of mistaken intentions and good deeds gone amok. Too-obliging Antoine (he thinks nothing of switching one hospital patient's morphine tube to another patient on request), jeopardizes everything to get complete stranger Louis back on track, from his relationship with Christine (when he brings home 4000 francs worth of flowers, she mistakes it for a marriage proposal), to his reputation on the job, where he lobbies to get Louis hired as a wine sommelier—despite the fact that Louis has no credentials and no grasp of the lingo. Soon, Antoine is coaching Louis on how to woo Blanche back, although Antoine has fallen for her himself.

What little we know of Blanche—she so fears being alone, she's about to marry a third party—doesn't make her seem like a very stable object of desire; still, Kiberlain has a poised, down-to-earth appeal. So the way the men manipulate her feelings for the sake of their own irrational bond is a little creepy. The accomplished players tick off the fluffy plot with skill, but Après Vous is only an appetizer, not an entrée.

APRÉS VOUS With Daniel Auteuil and Jose Garcia. Directed by Pierre Salavadori. (R) 110 minutes. In French with English subtitles. (**1/2
Review published in Good Times, June 16, 2005