PRICELESS [PG-13]
review by Michael Wood

Priceless (or Hors de Prix in its langue maternelle) is the new and charmant French romantic comedy from director Pierre Salvadori and starring the beautiful and talented Audrey Tautou of Amélie.

Tautou’s love interest is played by the equally endearing, though unknown stateside, Gad Elmaleh. On screen, the couple is luminescent, making Priceless a deliciously flirtatious adventure through the currency of love.

Set in the très riche Biarritz, in southern France, the film concerns Jean, a pathetic bell boy/dog walker/bartender for the local luxury hotel. Jean meets gold digger Irène (Tautou) during a passionate one-night-stand when she mistakes him for one of the resort’s wealthy patrons.

Expecting never to see the beauty again, Jean is shocked when she reappears a year later and the duo extends the affair for one more night. However, the following morning, Irène is found out and ditched by her sixty-something fiancée, only then to be crushed to discover Jean’s true identity. She heads to Nice to find her next sugar daddy.

In a love-crazed pursuit, Jean embarks on a cross-country quest to reclaim Irène, leaving him penniless and, in a twist, forced to find his own sugar mama. Through a series of remarkable coincidences and flirtatious escapades, Irène succumbs to Jean’s persistent charm and leaves the life of a gold digger for that of a lover.

What makes Priceless such a gem begins in the eyes of the love birds. Despite all their antics, manipulations, and misrepresentations, Tautou and Elmaleh have eyes that are as expressive as le français is easy on the ears. Yet, their eyes are only a part of the electric tension — sexual and otherwise — between Jean and Irène, as their game of cat and mouse intensifies.

Thanks to the script’s sharp writing, courtesy of Benoît Graffin and Pierre Salvadori, Tautou and Emaleh have a lot to work with as the story transpires in a heightened reality, where Irene’s effortless transitions between one rich gent and the next is unquestioned and Jean’s romantic fervor is championed. The universe in which Priceless takes place doesn’t get bogged down in the “realistic,” nitpicking detail that often plagues American romantic comedies. Rather, the world in which the lovers operate allows for a richer game of tugging heartstrings. The film’s progression only stumbles mildly with a few moments of forced physical comedy (i.e., a contrived opener with Jean clumsily dog walking), or Jean’s forced and unannounced plastic surgery.

Yet, what separates Priceless from the pack is the way in which Jean and Irène transform each other. Initially, it is Irène who spends all of Jean’s life savings in a day, thus causing him to seek refuge under the wing of a mature, female “benefactor.” When he becomes her “colleague” in the sugar-daddy/mama business, Jean is no longer just a hopeless wooer, but rather becomes apprentice and competitor to Irène.

This twist makes for some of the film’s most titillating moments, in which everyone — Jean and Irène included — is equally aware of, and bathes in, the richness of such sexual tension. Irène and Jean create a literal web of heartache between themselves and their multiple “liaisons,” so that in the end, the happy reward for untangling themselves from the mess is even more satisfying.

Though Priceless will likely make only a small, if any, splash in American cinemas, Tautou and Emaleh show keen balance of comedy and sincerity, providing a nice alternative to the often over-the-top and over-hyped American romantic comedy currently en vogue.•••

Michael Wood is a contributor and Editorial Assistant for EDGE Publications.