Apres vous...

Antoine (Daniel Auteuil of The Closet), the busy manager of a fancy restaurant, cuts through a park in his rush to meet his frustrated girlfriend, Christine (Marilyne Canto), when he stumbles across Louis (José Garcia) attempting to hang himself. Antoine foils his efforts and takes the intensely phobic, despondent klutz home, much to Christine's chagrin. Lovesick Louis recalls that he's sent his "suicide note" to his elderly grandparents, so Antoine goes with him to intercept the letter. Antoine finds himself taking responsibility for Louis' life, getting him a job as a sommelier at the restaurant (despite his total lack of knowledge about wine and his nervousness around strangers) and going to visit Louis' ex-girlfriend, Blanche (Sandrine Kiberlain of Alias Betty), a florist, and the cause of his heartbreak. Antoine finds that Blanche has a new boyfriend, and cunningly arranges for her to discover his infidelity. But when he offers Blanche comfort, she begins to feel drawn to him. With Antoine's encouragement, Louis gradually develops a newfound confidence, dressing better and excelling at work, all with an eye toward winning Blanche back. Antoine, meanwhile, is falling apart as he gets more involved in trying to fix Louis' life. Christine breaks up with him, and he struggles to hold it together at work. Worse yet, he finds himself increasingly attracted to Blanche, and conflicted in his allegiance to Louis. Pierre Salvadori's romantic farce Après vous... was shown at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Rendezvous With French Cinema in 2004. — Josh Ralske

Review AMG: Pierre Salvadori's Après vous... is a fairly entertaining French farce, greatly abetted by the strong presence of the redoubtable Daniel Auteuil as the harried Antoine and the undeniable offbeat charms of Sandrine Kiberlain as Blanche, the woman he finds himself falling for, to his dismay. In Louis, meanwhile, Salvadori and José Garcia, who plays the character, have created an effective comic foil. While there's little that's fresh or surprising about the plot, the strength of the performances and the friction created by making Louis essentially unlikable lend the film just enough edge to make it above average entertainment. The basic story line (a bourgeois gentleman rescues and brings home a scruffy loser who turns his life upside down) brings up unfortunate but unavoidable allusions to Jean Renoir's brilliant Boudu Saved From Drowning, which this charming but slight film cannot sustain. Aside from Auteuil's innate soulfulness and Kiberlain's incandescence, there are a couple of memorable comic scenes, including an early scene in which Louis hides in the backseat of Antoine's car while Antoine ad-libs the suicide note to Louis' grandmother, and the scene in which Antoine surreptitiously coaches Louis through his job interview at the restaurant. These scenes are the comedic highlights of what is otherwise a passable, genteel example of a timeworn genre. — Josh Ralske