A very good movie

Following the massive success of ’Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain’, Audrey Tautou became suddenly one of the hottest French actress and it didn’t take long before her career was launched abroad. Eventually, this would be her first English-speaking role. Later on, she would be cast in ‘The Da Vinci code’ and that would be pretty much the end of her international career (Marion Cotillard would turn out to be much successful internationally). Anyway, this movie was definitely marketed with Audrey Tautou (she is the only actor on the poster and her name is displayed prominently) but, in fact, she wasn’t the main character. No, the main character was played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, a complete unknown at the time, and the guy was just brilliant. Concerning Tautou, honestly, I thought she was rather miscast. I mean, she wasn’t really bad at all but, at the time, she was one of the most famous French actresses and, here, she was supposed to be portraying a Turkish woman. Of course, that’s the whole point of acting, I’m well aware of that, but I thought that it was terribly distracting. A part from that, it was a solid drama, very topical with some very efficient directing by Stephen Frears who produces his best work when working on socially conscious drama’s like this one. To conclude, in spite of its flaws, I thought it was a very good flick and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

8/10