Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2077 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-09-17
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, PAL
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 95 minutes

Synopsis
Daniel Auteil sheds the dramatic character of Michael Hanneke’s CACHE to star in this light French comedy. Auteil plays Francois, an antiques dealer who finds it far easier to locate an Art Deco rarity than a true friend. He has plenty of professional contacts, but an utter lack of people skills leaves him alone after office hours. His business partner bets an expensive vase that he can’t produce a friend within 10 days, and Francois struggles to pick out a best friend in an address book full of acquaintances and childhood chums. He keeps running into fellow loner Bruno (Dany Boon, THE VALET), who is friendly but can’t trust anyone. Bruno teaches him to be sociable as Francois continues his search. Even though MY BEST FRIEND centers on a man’s search for a friend, it resembles a standard romantic comedy in its structure. It may lack an innovative plot, but this French gem makes up for it in charm. Auteil plays Francois with such energy that it’s hard not to have affection for the man. Director Patrice Leconte has blended darkness and light in his past films such as THE MAN ON THE TRAIN, and he succeeds again here. Though MY BEST FRIEND is largely an enjoyable affair, there is an undercurrent of sadness throughout much of the film that keeps it from being too sweet.

Customer Reviews

Bland film
"My Best Friend" is an amiable but somewhat dull barely humourous French film starring Daniel Auteuil as an antiques dealer who is seeking a best friend after being told that he doesnt have any friends by some business acquaintances. He hires a taxi driver to help him make friends only for the taxi driver to gradually become the best friend he is seeking. The film climaxes with the taxi drivers appearance on the French "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire " show with Auteuil helping him in the "Phone a Friend" section. All fairly forgettable stuff.

From director Patrice Leconte and actor Daniel Auteuil, a sweet-natured film about friendship
Oh no, not another winsome human comedy about life-lessons and friendship. Buy a movie ticket or the DVD anyway. In the hands of director Patrice Leconte and actors Daniel Auteuil and Dany Boon, My Best Friend turns out to be not just a charming, sweet-natured fable, but a well-told and well-acted one. Francois Coste (Auteuil) co-owns a Paris gallery, has a great-looking apartment, seems estranged from his college-going daughter, knows many people in the business and has just impulsively bought at auction a very expensive Greek vase. One thing Coste lacks are any friends. Oh, he has plenty of business acquaintances, is reasonably cordial most of the time, but also, we notice, is somewhat distant to everyone he knows. He can talk antiques engagingly but he doesn't seem to really notice much about the people he talks to. When he gets in over his head financially with the purchase of the vase, his smart, good-looking partner is irritated. Francois has never even noticed that she likes women and has a partner of her own. She makes a bet with him. He has ten days to prove he has a best friend...or she gets the vase. Francois is smugly confident, until the people he adds to his list of friends begin telling him the truth. And then he meets a cabdriver, Bruno Bouley (Boon). Bruno likes people, listens to them, talks to them and has a great passion for odd facts. He wants to be on a television quiz program. People seem naturally to like Bruno. When Francois realizes he has no friends, real friends, the kind you can call up at 3 a.m. or who will do whatever it takes to come to your assistance if you need help, he decides to have Bruno teach him how to make friends. It doesn't work out quite the way Francois expects, or the way we expect, at least not till the very end of the movie.

Sweet-natured the movie is. Both Francois and Bruno learn some lessons that hurt, Bruno first and then Francois. That the story eventually works out for all concerned is no spoiler. We've smiled some, teared up a little, and left the movie house feeling well pleased and satisfied. We also ask ourselves, this is a Patrice Leconte film, from the man who has given us such exceptional movies as Mr. Hire (1989), Man on the Train (2002), Ridicule 1996) and The Widow of Saint-Pierre (2000)? It is, and My Best Friend is an amusing vacation from angst and irony and drama. It's a thoroughly enjoyable movie.

The two actors who make it work so well, of course, are Auteuil and Boon. They play off each other with great skill and authenticity. Auteuil is practically a French national treasure. Along with his contemporary Gerard Depardieu, the two have just about dominated French acting by male leads. Neither of them has conventional leading man looks, but both can play anything, from tragedy to comedy, from fools to heroes, and both can either dominate a movie or fade back into being one of the cast. Compare the versatility of Auteuil: Contemporary high drama in Cache (2005) and La Separation (1994), rollicking sword-play and romance in Le Bossu (1997), tragedy in The Widow of Saint Pierre (1994) and hopeless, dull-witted ineptitude in Jean de Florette and, especially, Manon of the Spring (both 1986).

Mon Meilleur Ami is an easy-going, charming movie about friendship and even love. "There is no love, just the tests for love;" no, "There are no tests for love, just love." Both make sense. That's why this movie works.

Frienship 4 Sale
Francois (Daniel Auteuil) has built a life a life without much human connection though he has an estranged daughter, Louise (Julie Durand) who lives with him and a steady lover who understands Francois better than he understands himself: she comes and goes as Francois wishes never making demands on his time or emotions. As his partner Catherine (Julie Gayet) comments: "You have built a life of things not friends." Appropriately enough, Francois is an antiques dealer who one day, seemingly on an impulse beyond his control buys at auction, a classical Greek vase supposedly commissioned by Achilles after the death of a dear friend in which Achilles once filled with his own tears.
Selfless friendship: an unknown quality that Francois wants to know more about particularly when Catherine bets him to produce an actual real, in the flesh friend: something that Francois has avoided his entire life.
Director Patrice Leconte has explored the dynamics of male bonding and friendship before particularly in the excellent, finely delineated "Man on a Train." But here, even though Auteuil and the object of his friendship Bruno (the excellent Dany Boon) do a good job at trying to make the plot serious and meaningful, Leconte's approach is too heavy handed and clumsy: too many scenes just do not ring true; they lack the kind of truth that make them come alive. Instead the denouements of most scenes fall flat and veer towards the mawkish and soap opera-like.
With all of that said, there is an undeniable thoughtfulness and caring in Dany Boon's performance as Bruno...a taxi driver who has memorized thousands of unrelated facts, failed at marriage yet not failed at life: he is alive with the stuff necessary to allow him easy access into people's lives: he is a mensch...he loves and is in return loved by all with whom he comes in contact. This is why Francois is both attracted and repulsed by him: Francois needs Bruno to fill the gaping hole in his life: a hole that for 50+ years Francois has had neither the need nor the desire to fill.
"My Best Friend" ("Mon Meilleur Ami") is not a perfect film but it is a good one: well acted, beautifully produced and though a noble failure, an interesting addition to the filmography of a very fine director.