Heartbreaker

Romain Duris plays a freelance pre-emptive thwarter of presumably ill-advised marriages, hired to woo women away from their fiancés. When a wealthy, meddlesome thug (Jacques Frantz) won’t have his daughter (Vanessa Paradis) hitched to a boring Brit (Andrew Lincoln), our man goes to work: boning up on George Michael lyrics and Patrick Swayze dance moves, then problematically and inevitably falling in love. Being French doesn’t make this any less formulaic, but director Pascal Chaumeil, with writers Laurent Zeitoun, Jeremy Doner and Yohan Gromb, does at least strive for a certain conceptual élégance. A lambent and luxurious Monte Carlo setting helps. The film insists too much on the sexual magnetism of its lanky, scruffy leading man (who’d likely have no hope of prying Paradis away from her real-life beau, Johnny Depp); he’s more plausible and appealing—with necessary tactical support from Julie Ferrier and François Damiens as his sister and brother-in-law—when just being a goof.