Mon Meilleur ami

2006, France, directed by Patrice Leconte

Leconte has a pretty uneven filmography, with a fairly strong run in the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, bookmarked roughly by Tandem at one end and Ridicule at the other, with the occasional high point since. This is pretty standard issue fare, though: the concept, with an antique dealer forced to show he has an actual friend rather than just a series of business connections, is pure Hollywood, and you wouldn't be surprised to see, say, Steve Carell, in the Daniel Auteuil role while Boon, for his part, busily hones the affable persona deployed with such success in the subsequent Bienvenue chez les ch'tis. Leconte's films, even when fairly empty-headed, usually look fine, and there's a warmth to the lighting in several of the early sequences here that's quite beguiling, though the regular use of zooms is a distraction, if in keeping with the television aesthetic that dominates late on when Boon's character stars on the French version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?