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The lawyer in question, a deadpanning 60-year-old named Bertrand (Fabrice Luchini), has been given a bodyguard and is warned that there are Russian mobsters on the lookout for anyone involved in the case. Nothing much is made of that threat in the film, but Bertrand forms a respectful relationship with the bodyguard Christophe (excellent French character actor Roschdy Zem). It is made clear from the outset that Christophe once had a sexual relationship with Audrey and that it ended, as all of Christophe's relationships seem to do, with little drama.
Though at the beginning both Christophe and Bertrand seem at ease with abstaining from sex -- one for professional reasons, the other for philosophical -- it quickly becomes clear that Bertrand has never encountered anything like the leviathan Audrey. She is a flighty and sexually boundless creature and is not shameful about these things; gyrating against a pole for a politician's pleasure and sleeping with every man who meets her gaze. Bertrand, a man of logic and argument, is thrown by this and is soon obsessed with the leggy temptress.
Never wearing more than anything that wouldn't pass for lingerie, Audrey isn't completely vilified under Fontaine but she certainly is bereft of any sort of expected conscience. When her 'celebrity pet' feature falls through, she ironically asks Bertrand to be the new focus of her piece: 'like American Idol but more legal.' But a shallow romance has no chance against bromance, and the stately courtship between Christophe and Bertrand is on par with Red and Andy Dufresne, the end of the film a flat nod towards The Shawshank Redemption.
The director builds some nice scenes between Zem and Luchini, two actors with great chemistry that play each other like a contest of who can do the better straight man. As the film goes on, however, plot becomes a bit more intrusive and the relationships begin to reform in more conventional tones, turning earnestly serious in the final reel and busting the movie's unique tone. Be thankful for the actors, especially Bourgoin, never dulling their characters' complexities, turning this abstract love triangle into a psychological study of dependence and obsession.
Fontaine, who co-wrote the script with Benoît Graffin, depends too heavily on structure for Monaco to really ensnare and is devoted so deeply to the humor and psychology of her May-December affair that she short-circuits the film's rushing erotic undercurrent. Obsessed with the image of its tall and tan leading lady, The Girl from Monaco ends up a weak cocktail with a big red cherry floating between its ice cubes.
Aka La fille de Monaco.
Let's get a room. Or a closet.
