Priceless

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A friend some time ago talked to me at length about why high school flicks are fundamentally flawed - why does the poor nerdy guy like the bitchy rich cheerleader? How are we supposed to root for a guy who is into a girl like that? The same fate befalls Priceless, Pierre Salvodori's romantic comedy. Dour bartender Jean (Elmaleh), a man with a perpetual hangdog expression, has the hots for gold digging Irene (Tautou), who's staying at the hotel in the south of France with her sugar daddy, Jacques (Dobtcheff). Irene, thinking Jean is a millionaire, sleeps with him and Jean, determined to hang on to her, spends his entire savings to keep her entertained but once the money runs out Irene's a goner. It's an unnecessarily overlong set up to ease us into what follows: Irene and Jean hook up some time later and she teaches Jean the 'con'. Jean then hooks up with the elderly Madeleine (Adam) and romances her out of a small fortune. Once it reaches the halfway point and that lengthy set-up is over, Salvadori forgoes a narrative in favour of a series of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels-influenced sketches, but Elmaleh and Tautou haven't the chemistry that Steve Martin and Michael Caine enjoyed. The movie's lynchpin - will Jean and Irene live happily ever after? - is a problem for Salvadori: when the movie kicks off, we're immediately on Jean's side (he's working a job that bores him, which makes him us, we've all been there) but how does he get the audience on side of a soulless, cheating gold digger like Irene? It's a problem that isn't solved and Salvadori must bring Jean down to her level by turning him into her. So, not only is he in love with a woman that the audience would find impossible to love, he's also a liar that's taking an innocent woman for a ride. Romantic comedy death. Salvadori hopes the audience will forget the couple's shortcomings - their marks are ridiculously loaded and can well afford a trick - but it doesn't work. What would have worked is that Jean and Irene get their comeuppance, but Salvadori doesn't paint the story that way - he wants us to want them to get together. No dice. On the plus side, the director moves the camera with ease and delights us in a few nice touches but for a romantic comedy there's not nearly enough romance or comedy.