Jeanne and the Perfect Guy

JEANNE AND THE PERFECT GUY (1999) **1/2

Reviewed 4/24/99

The enormously promiscuous Jeanne picks up men everywhere she goes, and as played by the gorgeous Virginie Ledoyen, we can see why she has no trouble seducing them. Moreso than even Benoit Jacques did in A Single Girl, directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau fawn over Ledoyen's visage. And so Jeanne and the Perfect Guy is perfect for guys who want to be enthralled by Ledoyen's beauty. The camera dotes over her in her various seductive tight-fitting outfits or sans such outfits altogether. However if Ledoyen scopophilia is not your cup of tea, little else recommends this French musical.

It starts off promisingly, as Jeanne, a receptionist at a medical clinic, cavorts in the film's first musical number with the off-hour custodians as she leaves work. The song and dance direct attention to the place of the working class in a way American films rarely even hint at. Unfortunately this thematic concern quickly evaporates, only emerging again briefly when Jeanne feels uncomfortable with one of her lovers, an upper class physician at the clinic. Jeanne soon meets her "true love" Olivier (Mathieu Demy) in a subway encounter. Her love for him never wavers even after finding out he has AIDS, but Olivier does not share her faith and he fears hurting her.

The grave problem for the movie is that Ledoyen and Demy have little chemistry, which undermines the entire basis for the film's conflict. The two are fine as actors, but neither they nor the screenplay are up to the task of making them believable lovers. The only difference between Olivier and Jeanne's other lovers is that she decides not to leave him. The AIDS aspect is dealt with very heavy-handedly, and this sort of material was handled much better in the American stage musical Rent.

Almost all American reviews of this film I've read mention Jeanne and the Perfect Guy's similarity to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, but they are similar only with respect to them both being French and both being musicals. I suspect Umbrellas is the only other French musical many of these critics have seen. There is the link of Matheiu Demy being the son of Umbrellas director Jacques Demy (and equally notable director Agnes Varda), but that link is very loose. Umbrellas is the far superior film, Demy's direction embodying the lyricism missing in Jeanne. The music style in Jeanne is pretty typical of most French musicals, a brand of songspiel, and it is done well here. It is just that the underlying substance of the film does not even merit this light treatment.