Cynically Charming Or Charmingly Cynical ?

Rating: 5/10 (28 April 2014)

There's something unique about French popular culture . While teenagers in the Anglo-Saxon world and beyond strum a guitar dreaming of becoming the 21st Century equivalent of John Lennon French teenagers wave an I-pod around convinced they are going to be the next Godard . Movie stars in Britain aren't officially movie stars until they start appearing in Hollywood block-busters . Not so in France where a film is judged as being a hit merely if it's a success within the French border . Indeed one of my favourite film trivia facts is that in 1993 the biggest grossing film in every country on the planet was JURRASIC PARK . The only exception to this was in France the biggest grossing movie being LES VISITEURS the time travelling comedy starring Jean Reno . It's probably not fashionable in being Francophile but you can't argue that the French really know something about the art of cinema
It's sad to report then that I wasn't highly impressed with THE ARTIST . A black and white French silent film that came out at the tail end of 2011 and ended up as a sleeper hit doing good box office and grabbing every award for best picture of 2011 . It's helped by the fact that there's no spoken dialogue and dialogue is conveyed via cue cards . For a French film it recognises Anglo-Saxon sensibilities very incisively and much of the charm is down by having a cameo by a dog and we all known have English speakers feel about mammals unlike the French who consider anything to be fair game when it comes to menus . THE ARTIST is definitely a charming film almost to the point that it's cynically charming and works best as a first date movie with romance and fully canine mammals . As I write this it's business as usual as I'm sitting alone in a lonely Edinburgh flat watching television which means the charm maniptutively engineered by the producers of the film doesn't work for me in the slightest and while I recognise the feel good factor I'm left unmoved by it