Sick Product of a Sick System

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

This is a nice romantic comedy about a French farmer who needs a wife (or cheap labourer) to run his farm, and who gets hitched to a young Romanian girl who needs money to raise her daughter.The big problem with this movie is that the girl is tragically miscast. She is played by a talented young actress, who unfortunately can't patch over the fact that she is so painfully clearly out of her love interest's league. She's one of those surreally waifish girls the French adore so much. It's a case of the beauty and the beast, and it just doesn't hold water. Apart from that, a good movie. Until the farmer's visit to Romania to pick up his wife, it's a hilarious comedy, after that it's a complex (if implausible), and surprisingly intriguing, love story.Michel Blanc is brilliant in a very difficult role. He's at the same time pompous and boyish, and would be the ideal match for an unlikely love story.The unsung star of this movie is the entremetteuse, Eva Darlan. She is vivacious, beautiful and terribly funny. The movie loses a lot when she drops out of the plot. I think she would have been a much better, and not least much more credible, Elena.Another problem with this movie is that they picked Romania as the rent-a-bride's country of origin. Fifteen years ago this would have been believable. Nowadays everybody knows that Romania isn't so bad as to make pretty girls so desperate to leave it that they'd gladly hitch up to a middle-aged French hillbilly. I don't understand why the writer didn't pick a more exotic and desperate country, Albania maybe or Ossietia or whatever.If you're looking for humour and don't mind a hefty dollop of implausible romance, this is your movie.

We saw the movie in a sneak preview and therefore had no idea what to expect. Looked like a romantic comedy - we should have left but we didn't. This flick has romantic parts, shows the not so normal life in a small french village, introduces several characters quite friendly and therefore pulls you into it. On the other hand, it really tries to be sweet but does it with an overdose - it is simply too much and far too simple. No twist, no surprise - far too boring to be interesting. Nice little moments with some french humor, though, especially from the main male character. But do they always need a dog, a child and flowers to show harmony? Yes, we understood it long before. It does not always take that much.

This is a charming story of unlikely companions cast together by circumstance and hard choices. It is interesting to see how the protagonists use their situation, once they have committed initially to their self interests, to pay each other back, and with love and compassion eventually find what they do not expect. Each phase of this progression is clearly imprinted in the viewer's experience from both points of view in a very patient, but not slow, immersion into the characters' hearts and psyches. The effect of this is to erase the viewer's point of view and leave the audience with a memorable impression of the whole, which is beautiful to behold.

This film will probably not be remembered in 10 years but it does not matter as it's not meant to be a 7th art masterpiece. The plot is simple but interesting, based on two facts: - the difficulty for French farmers to find spouses willing to settle in a farm; - the difficulty for young Romanians to get a decent job in their own country;A market-oriented solution would be to bring together the offer and the demand. And it's exactly what the dating company is doing. The problem is that human beings, unlike goods, have feelings: - it's hard for a French farmer to understand a girl from Romania; - it's hard for a Romanian girl to leave her country and her past behind.It's a nice reminder to those criticizing immigrants that it's always a last-resort and heart-breaking solution to move away from home in search for better conditions.Two great actors: Michel Blanc and Medeea Constantinescu.Last but not least, life in Romania is far from being as dull as the film pretends.