Culture

Director: Guillaume Canet (2.5/5)

Nothing, but nothing, will stand between the French middle classes and their hols, though a bunch of friends do pause for thought when their friend is left in a coma after a motorbike spill in Paris.
 
Guillaume Canet’s 2010 French film Little White Lies begins with an outstanding long take of a man driving home on his motorcycle in the early hours of the morning. After crossing light after light, he is horrendously side swept by a speeding truck. Despite his critical condition, his circle of friends choose to go off for their usual summer holiday together and so ensues a tangled, interweaving web of relationships and the slow unfolding of confusion, confession and unexpected revelations.
 
This is a fairly cliché reunion movie where a group gather for a vacation to eat, drink, confess, let blood, and drag skeletons out of cupboards. The absence of Ludo – the injured friend – weighs on each character significantly, leading to triggering reflections on morality and life choices. All harbour secrets and insecurities, ‘little white lies’ which slowly emerge as the holiday progresses accompanied to a classic soundtracks that includes tracks from Creedence Clearwater Revival, David Bowie and Janis Joplin.
 
But pretending your girlfriend hasn’t dumped you? Or that your best friend didn’t confess to having homosexual feelings towards you? Or convincing yourself that it’s okay to go to the seaside for a few weeks while your friend lies on death’s door in hospital? A lie is a lie, and whether it’s white, black or a pale shade of grey, the truth will come out in the end; or so Canet’s film suggests.
 
The moral of the story is a good one and the outbursts of raw emotion are great, even hilarious at times, with tears, fist-fighting, boating mishaps and smashed crockery. As you would expect, it is very French with lingering gazes aplenty. But overall, this is an effort to watch. The truths don't always ring true, the characters become increasingly dislikeable the more we come to know them, and it cruises along at snail pace. Canet builds to an overwhelming emotional blow-out but, sadly, delivers over-reaching melodrama.