Synopsis:
No good deed goes unpunished.
-- Clare Booth Luce, as quoted in The Book of Laws, 1980
Two of France's most celebrated actors, Daniel Auteuil ("The Closet," "Girl on the Bridge") and José...
No good deed goes unpunished.
-- Clare Booth Luce, as quoted in The Book of Laws, 1980
Two of France's most celebrated actors, Daniel Auteuil ("The Closet," "Girl on the Bridge") and José Garcia ("Trouble Everyday," "Jet Set"), team up in a romantic comedy from director Pierre Salvadori ("Wild Target") that begs the question: Can it actually be bad to be a Good Samaritan?
Antoine (Auteuil) is the kind of guy who is always helping everyone - from his customers at Chez Jean, the upscale French brassiere he practically runs, to his incompetent fellow waiters and busboys, Antoine is the guy you can count on. Then one night on his way to meet his girlfriend Christine (Marilyn Canto), he cuts through the park to save time and commits the ultimate good deed - he saves a man's life. And boy will he be sorry.
Despondent because the love of his life Blanche (Sandrine Kiberlain) has left him, Louis is at the end of his rope - or at least he'd like to be. But seconds after he's summoned the courage to kick away the suitcase he stands upon, literally inches away from hanging himself from a tree, poor Louis is saved by a complete stranger. Yes, kindhearted Antoine has committed the cruelest of acts - he has not allowed a man to take himself out of his own misery. He has reconnected Louis with his pain - and now the lovesick sad sack is ready to wring his savior's neck!
Apologetic, yet determined to keep this man alive, Antoine struggles under Louis' weight as he tries to cut him loose, unaware that Louis might just become a weight he will be trying to cut loose for the rest of his life. In fact, Antoine feels strangely guilty for having saved Louis, and he is resolute to right his "wrong," atone for his interference and meddle in Louis' life until the man is finally happy.
Getting Louis a job as a wine steward at Chez Jean (even though the man doesn't know a cabernet from a beer) and taking him into his home at the risk of losing his own girlfriend, Antoine really goes overboard when he plays cupid and tracks down Blanche (Sandrine Kiberlain), the woman who drove his new friend to despair. But as cruel fate would have it, Louis' lost love is an ethereal beauty. Now as much of a siren to Antoine as she has always been to Louis, Blanche unwittingly draws Antoine back to the florist shop where she works and causes him to buy thousands of francs worth of flowers he doesn't need just to be around her.
Suddenly finding herself in an apartment full of floral bouquets, Christine thinks that her noncommittal Antoine is finally ready to pop the question. But little does she know that her infatuated Romeo is climbing another woman's trellis and Louis is right behind him!
Entangled in a love triangle he never asked for, Antoine now faces making a fiasco of his friendship with Louis and messing up his relationship with Christine. The stress is even making him screw up at work. Have Antoine's good intentions paved him a road to hell?
Set in the most romantic city in the world, where the food is delicious and passions run deep, fate is about to step in and create an unlikely bond between two men. One will snatch the other from the brink of destruction then nearly push him toward it, and the other will take a surprising leap of faith that only a true friend can make.
-- © Paramount Classics
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