‘French Girl’ (2024) Movie Review - There’s No Place Like Home

Something amusing happened while I was watching this new romantic comedy. As soon as a character named Sophie appeared on the screen, I thought, "Wow, it has been a long time since I saw Julie Delpy in a new movie." It took me a few minutes to realize I was not watching Delpy in this film, directed by James A. Woods and Nicolas Wright. Sophie is played by a Canadian actress named Evelyne Brochu, whom I remember seeing in a drama show called Chouchou. There, Brochu stepped into the shoes of a teacher who ended up having an affair with a young student. No such age gap issue can be found in French Girl. Sophie, a chef, is in a happy relationship with her boyfriend, Gordon (Zach Braff), an English teacher. No, this teacher doesn't have an affair with a young student.

Brochu has a face that, in a split second, can change from seductive to innocent. She looks charming and vulnerable, making you want to protect her from terrible forces. Brochu is one of those actresses who, with her presence, obliterates tedium. She can merely sit on a chair and use her phone for, say, 1 hour and 46 minutes, and you still won't feel bored at any moment. Like her, the other actors, too, manage to remain consistently watchable. As a result, French Girl never comes across as dull. As long as you watch the film, you watch it without raising many objections.

But when you start looking back at the film, when you think about it after it's over, you realize that the experience was quite mediocre. Consider the scene where Sophie's parents meet Sophie and Gordon for the first time. Gordon has to be dragged on a luggage cart due to an incident with some pills. This leads to the parents thinking that their daughter's boyfriend is physically disabled. There was potential here to create a circus out of this situation. Woods and Wright, unfortunately, go in an underwhelming direction. Take another scene where Gordon, after retrieving a ring, tries to put a dead Mammie (Muriel Dutil) on the bed. I wondered what the Farrelly brothers, who in There's Something About Mary generated something outrageous from a zipper-stuck-in-a-male-anatomy incident, would have done with this moment.

The jokes in French Girl are not shaped properly. Their execution is often abrupt or clumsy. A running gag about Gordon being chased by a swan does not explode as hilariously as it would have with superb comic timing. One nice line here about counting sheep before they are slaughtered by somebody made me smile. Vanessa Hudgens, as Ruby, chews her part with relish. Her energy is infectious. French Girl's strengths, however, get undermined due to bland filmmaking.

The movie, by contradicting itself, becomes more displeasing. Gordon (he is often framed away from Sophie's family), at one point, asks Sophie to look at things through his eyes. The directors, though, fail to offer this perspective. Gordon becomes unlikable whenever he tries to fix his mistake (going to the restaurant to apologize on behalf of his girlfriend) or does something out of jealousy (making a scene after Sophie is hired by Ruby). Gordon's father, Peter (William Fichtner), tells Gordon that he regrets putting him in a protective bubble, as this decision has made Gordon less daring and weak. French Girl, through that lame, "safe" twist, suggests that the protective bubble of the family is indeed the best place to live your life. "There is no place like home" could be this film's tagline.

Final Score- [4/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times