My Best Friend.

"Light, airy, and sweet, Patrice Leconte's latest comedy swings his favorite premise - fruitful encounters between opposites - away from romance and into the wistful hunger for friendship in a careerist world," writes Ella Taylor in the Voice. "Leconte embraces sentimentality with the wisdom of a seasoned man and the goofy, light heart of a teenager, but he's never glib or condescending, and his mastery of tone makes this delightful farce a nutty feel-gooder about the difference between a friend and a contact."

Updated through 7/16.

But for Nick Pinkerton, writing at indieWIRE, My Best Friend "[displays]a total dearth of invention, relying only on its air of toothless benevolence." A "handful of viewers will get what they came for and pronounce the thing 'Very charming, very French!' while everyone who knows any better will keep a wide berth, and in a few months the next interchangeable pile of Gallic piffle will cross the Atlantic, as inevitably as the changing of seasons."

Earlier: "Unfortunately, Leconte is mainly drawn to sitcom scenarios, which might have been a reasonable tack to take if his material weren't so cautious and staid," writes Nick Schager at Slant. And Wade Major's interviewed Leconte for LA CityBeat.

Update: Alison Willmore talks with Leconte for IFC News.

Updates, 7/12: The New York Press's Armond White calls Leconte "an art machine. He makes stylish, intelligent, professional, never-bad movies practically on schedule. And there's always an element of humane piquancy—sort of like a twist of lemon in a soft drink or espresso—that makes you feel you aren't simply watching product. Leconte's proficiency has sometimes been overpraised as with Monsieur Hire (the 1989 film that made his US art-house reputation) and the somber Man on the Train; just as his glittering, capricious Girl on the Bridge was underrated. My Best Friend comes somewhere in between his earnest and frivolous modes."

"I guess My Best Friend is just cannily crafted entertainment, but what in hell is wrong with that?" asks Andrew O'Hehir in Salon.

Another talk with Leconte: Susan King in the Los Angeles Times.

Updates, 7/13: "Predictable from start to finish, this is the type of dramatic comedy that often gets labelled as pleasant, which means that it is not laugh-out-loud funny and inoffensively hobbles along to an ending that could have been spotted miles away," writes Boyd van Hoeij at european-films.net.

"My Best Friend is a comforting, sentimental tale of a kind that would be insufferably maudlin if made in Hollywood and unbearably affectless if it showed up at Sundance. Somehow it's easier to take in French," writes AO Scott in the New York Times.

Steve Erickson, writing in Gay City News, finds the film "shies away from exploring the real pain of loneliness in favor of pat morals about the importance of not using people."

"Too serious to be an out-and-out comedy, too funny not to be one, My Best Friend is a lot easier to enjoy than to classify," writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. "[I]t doesn't fit into a tidy category, and this is very much part of the plan."

"Leconte (Les Bronzés, The Girl on the Bridge) has been vocal about his plans to retire soon after some more lightweight fare, and he is indeed coasting with My Best Friend," notes Nicolas Rapold in the L Magazine. "It's not awful, but it is a cut below his abilities."

Update, 7/14: David Poland lunches with Leconte.

Update, 7/16: IndieWIRE interviews Leconte.

Posted by dwhudson at July 11, 2007 4:20 AM