LE PARFUM DE LA DAME EN NOIR (The Perfume of the Lady in Black, 2005) **1/2 The French think that they can do everything better than the British but are unable to entirely ignore their aquatic neighbors, hence a French murder mystery with more characters than you could shake with three bottles of pinot noire. Not to lessen their achievement the entire film (haven't read the novels) is permeated with a sense of absurdity of the sort you might expect from roll call at the class clown convention. It's no less than endearing on occasion, and promising enough to follow on all others. The over-wrought plot would probably be difficult to follow even if they were confident and capable enough to give you adequate clues, but they don't do this like the Angleesh , no? No. The best moments are in simple thrown away lines, facial gestures and body formations. And those moments are winning ones, and quite, quite French. For all that it's easy enough to guess at most of what's going on with this missing body and extra body and all that, which just makes it all the more relaxing. It's a nice divertissement, but they've hardly invented the baguette.
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