REVIEW: DVD Release: Heartbreaker

Film: Heartbreaker
Release date: 22nd November 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 105 mins
Director: Pascal Chaumeil
Starring: Romain Duris, Vanessa Paradis, Julie Ferrier, François Damiens, Héléna Noguerra
Genre: Comedy/Romance
Studio: Revolver
Format: Cinema
Country: France

Most Hollywood romantic comedies manage to be about as funny as having a tooth pulled with a pair of rusty pliers and as romantic as a Valentine's Day card written by accountants, but French director Pascal Chaumeil's debut feature is a breath of fresh air: stylish, witty, and with a romantic streak that is sweetly endearing, not sickly. Heartbreaker may not rewrite the rom com rulebook, but it's certainly a cut above the norm.

Alex Lippi (Romain Duris) is a disreputable womaniser, but he’s a disreputable womaniser with a difference: along with his resourceful sister Melanie (Julie Ferrier) and unconventional brother-in-law Marc (Francois Damiens), Alex runs a business that tasks itself with getting women to split from unsuitable partners.

Alex doesn’t have sex with any of the women he charms, and he refuses to intervene if both partners are genuinely happy in their relationship, but his professional ethics don’t stop him from doing whatever else it takes to get the job done - whether it’s getting arrested or masquerading as a teary-eyed humanitarian do-gooder.

Alex, however, is about to find himself firmly out of his comfort zone. Faced with a large debt that threatens the existence of his business, and possibly even his life, he accepts a job he would normally turn down from a wealthy flower merchant with apparently shady connections. The client’s daughter, high-flying wine expert Juliette (Vanessa Paradis), is seemingly perfectly in love and set on marrying wealthy English philanthropist Jonathan in glamorous Monaco in a mere ten days.

With no time to lose, Alex, Melanie and Marc head off to Monaco, where Alex poses as a bodyguard employed to protect Juliette by her concerned father. Under normal circumstances, Alex would not have to do much more than fake a few tears and feign a shared interest or two, but as he soon discovers, Juliette is no pushover…


The basic premise of Heartbreaker is utterly ridiculous, of course, but that’s probably one of the main reasons why Chaumeil and his cast have such fun with it, and pull off it so well. While Alex is clearly a fine looking man with a stereotypically Gallic je ne sais quoi, he’s also, as Juliette points out to him, a bit of a moron, and the spy team antics of Melanie and Marc veer from the implausible to the hilariously farcical. Rather than trying to limit the absurd nature of the plot, Chaumeil revels in it, and layers one screwball idea on top of another, sometimes with joyously amusing results.

In one of the film’s funniest scenes, but not its most politically correct, Marc disguises himself (not very well) as a bumbling Polish labourer whose inept attempts to fix the faulty air conditioning unit in Juliette’s hotel room lead very quickly and deliberately to complete disaster, with the desired result that she has to spend the night in Alex’s room (her on the bed, him on the couch).

The arrival of Juliette’s old friend Sophie, a sexually voracious free spirit, further complicates Alex’s task, but she is also a jarring reminder to Juliette that her life was very different, and a lot more exciting before she settled down with the tediously wet and teeth-gratingly well meaning Jonathan (Andrew Lincoln). At this point, it begins to become more obvious that Juliette and Jonathan’s relationship is not the stuff of rom com heaven, but when Jonathan finally arrives in Monaco, it looks as though as the game is up and Alex has to accept defeat.

Inevitably, perhaps, this is where Heartbreaker has to start playing it a little more straight, and where Alex has to complete the transition from smooth conman to genuinely smitten would-be love interest. Having already played his trump cards (involving a professed love of George Michael, Dirty Dancing and Roquefort cheese for breakfast), Alex has to improvise, and rely on a little good fortune to get the girl.

Fortunately, Chaumeil is a skilled enough director to manage doing this without completely upsetting the balance of the film, and you’d have to be a hopeless misanthrope not to enjoy the way Heartbreaker concludes. Even if you do find the ending a touch syrupy, or aren’t quite convinced by the chemistry, or lack thereof between Duris and Paradis, there is a brilliant, laugh-out-loud final scene, played out over the closing credits, where we see Marc attempting to take over Alex’s role as seducer for hire.

Apparently there is already a US remake in the works, but no doubt it’ll be as bad, if nowhere near as funny, as Marc’s attempts to follow in Alex’s footsteps.


In many ways, Heartbreaker is a thoroughly conventional rom com, and an ideal date movie for the unadventurous, but director Pascal Chaumeil is clearly a new talent who knows how to make something ordinary a little out of the ordinary. JG