Quatre étoiles
Quatre étoiles
| 20 January 2006 (USA)
Quatre étoiles Trailers

Franssou, a charming Parisian English teacher, who shares part of her life with a boring middle-aged lover, dreams of another life. So, when she unexpectedly inherits 50,000 euros, she grasps the opportunity and goes to the French Riviera in order to take it easy in luxury. In the four-star hotel where she rents a room she comes across Stéphane, a strange guy who is in the process of arranging Elton John's next coming to the place. Intrigued by the noisy ostentatious fellow, she follows him until she finally comes into contact with him. She knows Stéphane is at bay and decides to take advantage of it.

Reviews
Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring
Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?
TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.
BeSummers Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.
night_prankster This french movie is not so bad.There's maybe not so interesting and very regular,or even a little bit Hollywood,in the beginning,but it's gonna be cool after that.If you like movies made by France,so buy this movie on DVD and watch this.That's my recommendation.The acting is good,the directing of the picture is also good enough.This is comedy and you find yourself really funny till the end of the film. " "When I was just as far as I could walkFrom here today,There was an hourAll stillWhen leaning with my head against a flowerI heard you talk.Don't say I didn't, for I heard you say--You spoke from that flower on the windowsill--Do you remember what it was you said?" Robert Frost"
jrwp This may be indeed the worst film billed as a serious feature to have ever been made. Besides the ridiculous "love story" between two disgusting characters, the plot proceeds without giving any regard to the several propositions (some of them admittedly intriguing) which are made at the film's start. As the standards of production are up to the commercial circuit, one does not feel immediately tempted to click out the DVD and go on to some more rewarding chore. Thus proceeds the expectation that, somehow, the apparently random sequences of scenes - some of them slightly funny, mainly due to the performance of the Formula 1 retired driver - will wrap up in some slightly logical way. No way. The ending is so absurd, that I felt inclined to shoot at my TV set. Of course, this would only add injury to the insult.
writers_reign Even though the chances of her equalling let alone eclipsing her fantastic performance in Se Souvenirs des belles choses are remote to non-existent I will always seen anything Isabelle Carre appears in because she is not only a fine actress but also gorgeous in a quiet, under-stated manner. Mostly she's chosen or been lucky enough to appear in quality product but there's always a first time and this, I guess, is it. We have not one but two dodgy premises here; first that someone as gorgeous as Carre would choose to shack up with Michel Vuilleroz; Vuilleroz is, read my lips, a great actor, he is, after all, a member of Le Comedy Francaise and they don't do chopped liver but even his mother would not presume to cast him as love interest and Carre DOES find him boring but the point is she would NEVER have found him partner material in a million years. Second dodgy premise; having inherited 50,000 euros out of the blue Fransouss (Carre) decides to spend it all in one fell swoop, accordingly she buys a classy car and checks into the Carlton at Cannes where she encounters a guy, Stephane Garcia (Garcia) who makes Vuilleroz look like Tom Cruise and is mean with it so naturally she falls for him like Richmond fell for Grant. Not only is Stephane a small time con man - he is 'promoting' Elton John who, he claims, will check into the Carlton any day now and until he does Stephane is living on the cuff - but also beats up Fransouss and leaves her stranded in the country. Despite this .... well, some girls NEVER learn. It wouldn't be so bad if Garcia had any personality or charisma - I STILL don't know what Sandrine Kiberlain was doing with him in Apres Vous when she could have had Daniel Auteuil - let alone looks and when the leading man is a no-no it only makes everything else that much worse. On the credit side we have Isabelle to look at and though it should be it's not quite enough.
moimoichan6 There is something wrong with today's french cinema, and it perhaps comes from what's been it's most fascinating side since the "nouvelle vague" : it's attraction, mixed with repulsion for American movies. Since the 60's, the french directors have always been fascinating by American cinema. But most of them use the American cinema's codes to transpose them in a french environment : from Truffaut' "Tirez Sur Le Pianiste" - which plays with the stereotypes of the Film noir in a french universe - to Gans' "Pacte Des loups" - which transposes the western codes in the pre-revolutionary France.And it seems that, with "Quatre étoiles", Christian Vincent tries to archive this form of transformation of American's codes with the french touch. Indeed, the director quotes himself American's comedies from the 40's and says they're direct influence to make this film. "Quatre étoiles" tries to transfers the atmosphere of American's classical comedies from Los Angeles to Cannes. But unfortunately, it doesn't work. Why ? Like in a Cukor' or Lubitch' comedy, the character - a young an inconstant woman - inherit, out of nowhere, 50000 euros and decides to spend it all in a week in Cannes, where, in search of adventures, she falls in love with a small time crook, played by José Garcia. And if a lot of situations are similar to 40's and 50's American films, it never reaches their level of grace and humor. It's true that we have, like in American movies, a young and in-experimented girl who knows exactly what she wants, and who decides to change her life and social position in a day, and that we also have an impossible love story between two characters who hate each other, and are still stuck together, but everything seems so small compared to its models.When, in a American movie, the character would have inherit millions of dollars, the character here has only a few euros left, which can't provokes great and hilarious contrasted situations. The movie always avoid absurd situations and epic quiproquos, like it is afraid of its comical potential : everything stays calm and little, like the characters, who are just a reduction of American stereotypes : like the talkative-but-not-so-bad-crook. And when you reduce stereotypes, nothing much stays.What stays after this very little movie is a small impression of boring, just tempered by the presence of the great Francois Cluzet, who plays a very funny half-brained ex-formula 1 driver, who falls in love with the wrong girl.