La Verite Si Je Mens! 2 (2001)

The Sephardic Jewish characters who headlined the riotous 1997 comedy Would I Lie To You? - all employees in the garment business - return for this laugh-filled 2001 sequel. At the center of the farce are Dov (Gad Elmaleh), Patrick (Gilbert Melki), Serge (Jose Garcia), Yvan (Bruno Solo) and Eddie (Richard Anconina), friends for life and colleagues in the said industry, who spend their days wheeling and dealing and establishing connections but run the socioeconomic gamut from filthy rich to lower working class. A series of misunderstandings commences when blue-collar Serge - employed as a motorcycle messenger and living with his parents - takes the wealthy Patrick's blue Rolls Royce convertible out on an errand and runs headfirst into Chochana (Elisa Tovati), a Jewish girl with whom he feels instantly smitten. She naturally assumes, given the car, that he's wealthy - and he of course does nothing to discourage this. In time, Serge manages to prolong the economic ruse to such a degree that he ends up engaged to the high-maintenance Chocana, and on a headfirst collision course with her furniture kingpin father (Enrico Macias). Meanwhile, the garment industry as a whole in Le Sentier (the chief Parisian neighborhood in which the men do business) suffers from a massive economic downturn, thanks in no small part to escalating labor costs and the flourishing of Internet start-ups; in desperation, Yvan and Eddie turn to EuroDiscount, a massive chain of European department stores, with a feeble attempt to sell their merchandise to that outfit. They fail to count, however, on the ugly reaction of the cunning manager, Vierhouten (Daniel Prevost), which threatens to send them spiraling toward bankruptcy.