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By Brian Lafferty
September 24, 2010 (San Diego)--My favorite scene in the French film Heartbreaker comes towards the end. Alex (Romain Duris), who is tasked with breaking up a heiress’s relationship with her fiance, puts on I’ve Had the Time of My Life from her favorite movie Dirty Dancing. He starts dancing, having memorized all the steps. I cracked a really wide smile when Bill Medley began singing. I wasn’t laughing a lot during Heartbreaker but I sure was smiling.
Alex, his sister, and brother-in-law run a unique service. They specialize in breaking up relationships for a fee. They have specific rules. “We open their eyes, not their legs,” says Alex. They also don’t break up relationships for racial or religious reasons. They are hired by a very wealthy man to break up his heiress daughter Juliette’s (Vanessa Paradis) relationship with a man he doesn’t like. The only problem is they have ten days before the wedding.
Screenwriters Laurent Zeitoun, Jeremy Doner, and Yohan Gromb are not content to settle for the basics. They go all the way. The team sifts through Juliette’s garbage to get an idea of what she’s like. Alex watches and studies Dirty Dancing really hard, paying particularly close attention to the dance at the end between Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. They have a van with most of the bells and whistles that they use for surveillance. They even create a pirate radio station which broadcasts Juliette’s favorite song "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" while Alex, acting as Juliette’s bodyguard, chauffeurs her. None of this is intrusive nor does it overwhelm the story. It acts as a component of the plot, not the centerpiece.
The romance in this picture grows naturally. Whereas most American romances tend to begin the relationship in the First Act, it seems to me most foreign movies let them unfold gradually. Alex doesn’t realize it at first but he has feelings for Juliette and it takes him almost the entire movie for him to figure it out. Same thing with Juliette, who slowly rethinks her relationship with her fiance. A lot of people this side of the Atlantic might get impatient and wonder why it is taking them so long to see they belong together. But when you think about it, falling in love and realizing that perhaps you’re with the wrong guy doesn’t happen overnight.
The movie succeeds not just as a love story but also as a respect story. Alex and Juliette have an uneasy bodyguard to client relationship. Their conversations and their actions appear on the surface to be forced but upon further examination, it’s realistic. When they really get to know each other it evolves from a successful respect story to a gentle and believable love story.
This film made me feel good. The payoff paid off more than I expected it to. I smiled a lot during the film and well after. There are few minor quibbles, the most prominent being the contrived an unnecessary insertion of the sex-hungry best friend of Juliette but they are minor. Flaws aside, Heartbreaker takes a somewhat original idea and does everything right with it.
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