Ill-Informed Gadfly

(Seen at the 16th annual VCU French Film Festival at the Byrd Theatre in Richmond, Va.)

“L’Invité,” a modestly entertaining and entirely unimportant comedy of manners starring Daniel Auteuil and Thierry Lhermitte, is a good lesson in the French film industry’s economies of scale. It would be unthinkable in Hollywood. It puts two of France’s most popular and bankable leading men — think Tom Hanks and George Clooney — in a modestly scaled, low-budget comedy with an extended sitcom plot. I have no idea how it did at the box office — there appears to be little enthusiasm for it on IMDB — but it can’t have been too big a loser, because there wasn’t much to spend money on beyond the salaries of the leads. Most of the movie takes place inside an apartment or in the adjacent stairwell, with just a handful of sequences shot elsewhere. What’s remarkable to an American viewer is that Auteuil and Lhermitte agreed to appear in this movie. It’s just such a trifle. It doesn’t stretch their skills in the slightest. Hanks or Clooney could never be bothered.

Whether that’s a good or a bad thing, I can’t be sure. If “L’Invité” were better, it would be easy to for me savage American A-listers for only taking on prestige projects when their French counterparts are happy to appear in lightweight crowd-pleasers. But “L’Invité” is more … pleasant than surprising or uproarious. The screenplay — adapted from a stage play — has little zing, relying on lame devices like a leaky roof to set up jokes. Auteuil plays Gérard, formerly a manager in the plastic-wrap industry, who’s been out of work for three years. Valérie Lemercier (who had a small part in Sydney Pollack’s 1995 “Sabrina” remake but is otherwise little-known on these shores) is Gérard’s dowdy and clueless wife, Colette. And Lhermitte plays Alexandre, the suave image consultant who’s just moved into the apartment beneath them. Gérard interviews for a job overseeing a factory in Indonesia and is manipulated into inviting the company’s human-resources manager over for dinner. Alexandre — motivated by charity, it appears — decides to save the uncultured Gérard and Colette from themselves. (They have little taste in art, food or wine, and Gérard spends his free time playing with model trains.) Alexandre spiffs up their apartment and plans an elegant meal with an eye toward wowing their guest. But of course his plans backfire in ways he couldn’t have imagined. The plot turns on, among other things, appreciation of garish avant-garde art — just in case you forgot these folks are French.

Auteuil is my favorite French actor. He’s entirely ordinary-looking — 5-foot-7, with a craggy face, prominent nose and soft midsection. But he’s equally effective when he’s cast according to type (as in this movie) or against it. He can be dashing or repulsive, charismatic or neurotic, a lover of beautiful women or an awkward, friendless bore. (For Auteuil in romantic-hero mode, check out Patrice Leconte’s ravishing “The Widow of Saint-Pierre.”) He does deft work as Gérard, making him alternately spineless, weaselly and hot-tempered. Lemercier proves a gifted comedienne — her lack of vanity comes in handy as the thick and unstylish Colette. And Lhermitte shows a quick wit beneath his handsome and unruffled persona. The three leads are unfailingly professional as “L’Invité” ambles along its well-trod path. I give director Laurent Bouhnik credit for this much, though — even in an unpretentious formula comedy, he rejects a simplistic happy ending. Instead, “L’Invité” concludes with notes of irony and ambiguity. It’s just unsettling enough to keep your synapses firing for a minute or two after you leave the theater.