Film Review: Mon Meilleur Ami (2006)

In college I had a good set of friends. Not a huge crowd, mind you, but enough to keep me and them busy with “dates,” get-togethers, dinners, and movies. We kept in touch by telephone (what you young ‘uns call landlines nowadays), and when I moved to Japan shortly after graduation to take a job as an English teacher, by letters and super-expensive transpacific phone calls. I think my phone bill averaged about US$250 a month, which even for Japan was expensive. I didn’t regret a yen of it.

At the time (1994) I had exactly three friends who were on email: Noel, Michael S. and Michael M. (None of my girlfriends had email addresses. In fact, no female I knew at my university who wasn’t in the Engineering or Computer Science programs had an email address.) We would write ridiculously long emails to each other, sometimes as often as twice a week, and we would punctuate that with occasional postcards, gift packages and yes, letters. Real, live letters.

Because my dial-up account was expensive, and the telephone company also charged all of my phone calls, I would limit my Internet access to once a week, and only to download emails and upload my responses. Sunday mornings were big events in the Asturias home in Hita-shi, Oita-ken, Japan: wake up, turn on the computer and external modem, make my breakfast smoothie or prepare my cereal with the oddly soothing sound of the modem connecting to my Tokyo-based ISP screeching in the background, and then plop myself down in front of my Packard Bell laptop to eagerly download my messages. Rarely would I get that dreaded “No new mail” message. Instead, I usually had at least two really long, really juicy electronic letters that I would spend the rest of the week reading and re-reading and re-reading, after which I would spend another day or two crafting my own equally lengthy responses. Sunday morning I’d perform the same ritual, uploading my responses, and then I’d spend an agonizing week waiting for my correspondents to shoot back their quirky, funny, and usually riddled-with-spelling-errors-but-did-I-care-hell-no emails.

Deep sigh. The good ol’ days.

Now my Inbox is cluttered with nothing but junk emails, e-newsletters, dire solicitations from charities, and mass-mailed jokes and prayers and pictures from friends who can’t be bothered to send even an e-card at holidays and birthdays, let alone a personal message or (God forbid) an actual greeting card with an actual stamp that went through the actual Post Office. I tried getting on Facebook for a few weeks, and even spent a precious hour or two setting up my account and doing the obligatory search for long-lost friends who might be on it, but then I gave up after that one week when I realized that it was really just a glorified version of Twitter, with people who I never actually see or hear from in real life sending me and their 2,673 friends blasts about every random thought that pops into their heads.

As for my snail-mail mailbox? Fuggedaboutit. The last card I received from anyone was from — drumroll — B. That’s right. My husband. Who lives with me. He sent me two postcards while he was in Seattle a couple of weeks ago. (What can I say? Now you see why I married him.)

Remember the days when we would all get letters and cards on occasion from friends and relatives? When was the last time someone surprised you with a real letter to let you know that they were thinking about you?

I had the pleasure of hearing from a truly long-lost friend a few weeks ago, one I hadn’t spoken to or heard from since my sophomore year in high school. We had practically grown up together, both here and in the Philippines, and had known each other since 2nd grade. When I changed majors in college, though, we drifted apart and somehow never got back in touch. I’d occasionally Google her name over the years, trying to find her, but with her relatively common name it was an impossible task.

She did finally track me down on Facebook, though, and we had a fantastic reunion lunch when she was in town for a home visit. I laughed when she told me that she’d searched on Facebook for me for years and was delighted to finally find me. “Uhm, sweetie, I’ve had my own Web site for my various businesses for about five years. You could’ve just Googled me years ago and found me that way!“

Isn’t it funny that, with all the myriad ways we have of connecting with each other — telephone, cell phone, fax, Skype, instant messaging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, Web sites, and yeah, letters — we still have difficulty actually performing the most basic acts of communication?

How many times have you actually met in real life with a real friend in the past week? Not contacts or clients or business acquaintances. Friends.

Do you know who your friends are? Do they know you’re their friend?

If you need more inspiration to get off your computer and go out and actually nurture whatever friendships you have, you need to see Mon meilleur ami. The film’s tag line is, “It takes a lifetime to learn the meaning of friendship…Francois has 10 days.” You, however, have approximately one hour and thirty minutes, and that’s more than enough for you to be captivated by this very warm, very moving and very inspiring film.

The ever-brilliant, ever-reliable Daniel Auteiul is Francois, a self-absorbed and manipulative little shit of an antiques dealer who has no friends. How does he know this? Well, the people whom he thinks are his friends tell him so one night over dinner. Fortunately for him, these are not your average “friends.” No, they’re pretty darn brutal about their assessment of his character, telling him in no uncertain terms that no one likes him, no one cares about him, and hey, while we’re at it, no one will probably attend your funeral either. Pass the salt, will ya?

Francois, understandably, is shocked at these revelations, although true to form, he doesn’t really seem to care all that much. On the fly he makes up a best friend. Mon meilleur ami! His business partner, Catherine (the beautiful and elegant Julie Gayet), bets him a wildly expensive Greek vase (the paintings on which, tellingly, depicts the friendship between Achilles and Patroclus) that he can’t produce this so-called best friend within ten days. Francois, who is inexplicably drawn to the vase, gladly takes the bet, and he spends the rest of the film trying desperately to prove to her, and then to himself, that yes, he really is capable of genuine, lasting friendship, dammit, even if he has to pay for it.

The first order of business? Finding someone who’ll help him actually learn the dictionary definition of the term, and for this he hangs all of his hopes on a genial, trivia-obsessed taxicab driver whose lifelong ambition is to be on a game show. I’m probably not giving anything too much away when I write that although Bruno (played by the wonderful Dany Boon), unlike Francois, seems to have all the prerequisites necessary to make friends, he has his own share of personal troubles.

I can’t tell you too much more, lest I give away all the delightful surprises and unusual twists of this film. It’s fairly easy to discern the budding, awkward friendship that blooms between the two men as Bruno tries to school Francois in the subtle arts of conversation, making jokes and demonstrating empathy, all in the name of making friends. As Francois is anything but subtle, he makes horrifying mistakes along the way, so much so that I cringed every time he approached a random stranger on the street. My head kept moaning, “Oh, he’s gonna f*** it up!” And naturally, he does.

Auteuil is a joy to watch, as always. He’s France’s answer to DeNiro, with his rugged, dour good looks and his ability to convey depths of emotion with a flick of a droopy eyelid. His transformation from a thoroughly unlikable and selfish bastard into something resembling a mensch isn’t quick, nor is it pretty, but it’s hard-earned and, as Bruno would say, certainly sincère.

Bruno, however…ah, Bruno. Or, more precisely, Dany Boon. He’s the real talent here, the exact opposite of Francois in both temperament and physical presence. He lacks Francois’ smooth, urban sophistication and coldness, and is instead the kind of open, ever-smiling, ever-cheerful person one might (or might not) want to share a cab ride with, depending on your mood or temperament. Boon shares undeniable chemistry with Auteuil — it’s a casting director’s dream team here — and holds his own against his formidable co-star. His face registers emotion more sharply than Auteuil, as befitting someone who is playing the more emotionally-available character in this odd duo, but he’s never over the top. Instead, he inhabits the role so perfectly that when he has his moment in the spotlight — literally — in the last half of the film, he doesn’t seem to be playing a role at all and instead disappears into the nervous, uncertain side of Bruno that had always threatened to overwhelm him. My heart seemed to actually stop at one point; you ache for him to do well and to finally redeem himself and, in the process, Francois.

In this film Bruno seems more Irish or English than French, the owner of what Francois perceives to be a gift for conversation, but as the storyline progresses the audience is treated to the hidden sides of Bruno, the parts of him and his history he hasn’t shared with Francois or anyone else. When Albert Camus wrote about discovering an invincible summer within himself in the depths of an awful winter, he might as well have been speaking about Bruno, a seemingly bright summer who hides within himself the dying glow of a long, cold winter.

I thought I knew how this film would end, but then of course, it’s a French movie, for God’s sake, and that means it could end in ways one would never expect. Does Francois finally grasp the true meaning of friendship? Will Bruno finally fulfill his lifelong dream? Will the two of them enjoy an authentic friendship, or will their evolving, complicated relationship end in sorrow, perhaps even in tragedy?

The end matters tremendously, but in this case, so does the means. I began crying about halfway through the movie and didn’t stop my silly sobbing until the credits rolled to a stop. (Sidenote: the final shot of a Parisian bridge against a blue, stormy sky, is beyond breathtaking.) I thought of friends, not of the electronic kind but of the real-life kind, the kind who one can call in the middle of the night when one can’t sleep; the friends with whom one can share endless cups of coffee or mugs of beer during times of joy, sadness, fear, or even just plain boredom; the friends with whom one would rather spend whole afternoons doing absolutely nothing than sending pointless chain letters that threaten death (I mean, seriously?) if not forwarded expeditiously. Despite all the folks I know on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and my contact lists on Gmail, Yahoo! and Hotmail, I wonder if I still have friends who fit that description. I’m not so sure.

Francois and Bruno found the answer to the question about the meaning of friendship. But do we still remember?

Rating: 5 of 5 stars. The friendship between Bruno and Francois may not be perfect, but this film certainly is.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.