Avenue Montaigne (Fauteuils d'orchestre) (Orchestra Seats) Reviews
Top Critic
A film that seeks to amble it way towards resolution and which offers a few insights and smiles along the way.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Even if this fine French meal isn't as rich or feels a little less than it might have been, it's still delightful to sit through, course after winning course.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
The movie is as airy as a spun-sugar dessert, but Thompson's observations on the artistic life are both affectionate and knowing: Beauty and wealth, though inevitably compelling, are appreciated as means to humane ends, not goals in themselves.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Watching the charming Avenue Montaigne makes you realize not only how much we miss when mainstream French films are not on the movie menu, but how much we miss when American studios define 'romantic comedy' so strictly.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
It's one of those 'what's-not-to-like' movies, a fantasy about life and Paris that passes painlessly, a trifle elevated by its Parisian settings and our desire to lose ourselves in them.
| Original Score: B
Thompson's crowd-pleaser makes up in refined schmaltz what it lacks in innovation or profundity.
When it all wraps up as neatly as the treacliest Hollywood film, we don't feel cheated, but rather enjoy the satisfaction of a story resolved, and we're happy for each of the people we have spent our hour with.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
If you're not going to Paris this spring -- and let's face it, so few of us are -- the next best thing might be Avenue Montaigne.
Full Review
| Original Score: B
Feather-light, Avenue Montaigne is lifted from mere pleasantness by its quirky character details.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
That the film succeeds as well as it does despite a series of coincidences that strain credibility is a credit to a fine cast and a joie de vivre that pervades even the most implausible moments.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
How much you respond to its calculated charms depends largely on your response to the waif-in-the-big-city appeal of de France.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Aside from pretty people behaving cutely, though, there's just not much here, and even devoted Francophiles may nod into their cafe crèmes.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
A fine cast and a realistic touch give the charming farce a sweetness and emotional intimacy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
The picture is very obviously crafted as a fable. Its characters are stereotypes at the beginning, but our focus sharpens as we watch them: They sneak out of the roles we've assigned to them and become people instead.
It may pull you into the tent with a promise of hoochie-koochie girls, but it delivers a rousing sermon on faith, hope and charity before it lets you back out again.
| Original Score: 3.5/4
It's formula stuff, to be sure, but full of feeling for the sweep of the past as well as for the unsettled, yearning present. Echoes of Juliette Gréco, Gilbert Bécaud and Charles Aznavour haunt the soundtrack.
Avenue Montaigne, a delicately charming fable set in Paris, offers the kind of experience we secretly crave when we visit any great city: meaningful encounters with its people.
Brasseur's still got his scuffed charisma, and even Dupontel gets away with his hoary art-for-the-proles act. Et voilà! Charming if you're in the mood.
The film serves as a timely reminder of the tastefully sybaritic terrain that our own mainstream moviemakers have largely ignored in the commercially driven thirst for blood and gore.
Avenue Montaigne is a tasty specimen of Gallic comfort food: it's well-sauced, it goes down easy and it satisfies.
Avenue Montaigne would be difficult to stomach if it weren't so light and uninsistent, and if its actors weren't so charming. I still rolled my eyes -- but sometimes I do that when I get a really good croissant.
Love is in the air, obviously, and so is the smell of mothballs. Fans of Diane Johnson's books (Le Divorce) may fetishize the Paris depicted in Avenue Montaigne, but at times it feels like a diorama of bourgeois natives.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/6
The characters are generic in a tres French way, and the predestined happy ending reeks of Hollywood sentimentality.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Rarely has Paris seemed more enchanting than in Danièle Thompson's optimistic ode to Gallic romance.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
A film about love and art, about passing time and time passing, Avenue Montaigne is a humble pleasure.
| Original Score: 4/5
Pleasant is perhaps the best word to describe the film. It entertains while it lasts, does not overstay its welcome (1:45 feels just about right), and provides reasonable closure to all the storylines.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
[Actress Cecile] De France is irresistible, and the whole film is like a big cookie.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
A delicious French pastry, tart and sweet, steeped in Parisian glamour.
Who can turn le monde on with her smile? Why, it's Jessica (Cécile De France), a small-town gamine with spunk to spare in Avenue Montaigne.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
[Daniele Thompson] directs the multicharacter comedy with such smooth assurance that the movie glows with infectious cheerfulness.
