Every Jack Has A Jill
Release: 1 July
Length: 80 minutes
Rating: M
French romantic-comedy Every Jack Has A Jill is the debut feature from writer/director Jennifer Devoldère that treads the well-worth path of boy-meets-girl, complications, love, more complications etc. with a typically French twist – the characters don’t meet until almost the end of the film.
Chloe (Mélanie Laurent) lives in France. She has difficulty with relating to people and spends her time watching mediocre American films like Dirty Dancing because, as she explains to her dumb-struck neighbours in the beginning, the characters seem more real than actual people.
Jack (Justin Bartha) lives in America. When he surprises his (unbelievably hot) girlfriend with two tickets to Paris, it is perhaps inevitable that he gets dumped. Deciding to take the trip alone, he loses his luggage, and it falls into the hands of Chloe. Rifiling through his underwear is enough to decide that he is the perfect man for her and so she returns the luggage with some surprises in the camera for Jack to find. He does, and his obsession begins…
The film is light. Very light. It is air. Everything is light. The jokes are light. The plot is light. The dialogue is light. Even the subtitles are a light shade of pink, written in an unusual font and so small that they can often be difficult to read.
Devoldère has a deft understanding of the romantic comedy conventions, which is perhaps why she is so successful at breaking them. As I mentioned earlier, the characters don’t meet until almost the end of the film (and even when they do it isn’t clear sailing). To her credit, Devoldère not only manages to make this scenario completely plausible, she also nails the testy relationship between the French and American tourists perfectly.
It is standard for the romantic comedy female to be a bit strange, but unfortunately the character of Chloe is a little too weird – she borders on Autistic. Despite being quite attractive and free-spirited, she still manages to shy away from people making it difficult to understand why she wasn’t institutionalised. Usually agoraphobics don’t leave the house. Her “strangeness” always comes across in annoyingly self-conscious ways, such as dancing to the music on Jack’s iPod. She’s so crazy, she just doesn’t care what anyone thinks.
Yeah, right.
In the end, however, Every Jack Has A Jill (which must stand as one of the worst titles since Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot! The original title, Jusqu'à toi translates as Up To You and is slightly less unwieldily) is the kind of mildly enjoyable film you forget about as soon as you walk out the door. Was it terrible? No. But it wasn’t that great either.
PASS.
