Avenue Montaigne (2006)

In Paris you will find love!

A woman goes to Paris and takes a job just in the right intersection of three different worlds signed by the efervescencent universe of art. An old man who decides to sell all his artistic collection, a succesful actress who would love to perform as Simone de Beauvior in a film next to start and finally a pianist tired of being succesful, who would enjoy to play for single people far from the crowding world.

Slow but progressively, she will enter and turn around inside the affective existence of these people and will become a fundamental part in the rest of their lives.

A lovable and engrossing romantic comedy that will engage you from start to finish. Don't miss it!
June 12, 2008

French to the Max

Avenue Montaigne is one of those movies that might be considered "schmaltzy" by some. Improbable, to be sure; and had it not been set in Paris, it might not have worked for me. But I found it to be a charming, feel good story with actors who carried their roles lightly and well, and with a great sound track. March 11, 2008

Pleasant time waster

Country waif Jessica (Cecile de France) moves to Paris and lands a waitress job that allows her to flit about on the fringes of the art world, where she learns that artists are human just like the rest of us. This film is well-made, well-acted, and completely inconsequential. Recommended for Francophiles. November 11, 2007

Ingenue glorieuse

The female lead is extraordinary, not so much for her acting (which is good) but for her charisma. She's every bit as special as Audrey Hepburn and every bit as good looking. I haven't seen her like in decades.

The story line is imaginative...don't the French always manage subtle sophistication in portraying human interaction. There is nothing offensive or vulgar, just a lot of Gallic charm. It's a movie I immediately loaned to my best friend and one you'll be glad to have seen. October 19, 2007

pleasant if unmemorable French trifle

Just how much you'll enjoy "Avenue Montaigne" - a lighter-than-air comic souffle set in a picture-postcard-perfect Paris - may well depend on your level of interest in all things French and continental.

Our tour guide for the occasion is a perpetually upbeat, pixie-haired waitress named Jessica who becomes both an observer of - and occasional participant in - the lives of some of the more colorful patrons who frequent the café at which she works. These include two people who produce art and one who consumes it: an unhappy concert pianist who has grown weary of playing music to elite audiences and yearns to rip off his tuxedo and tickle the ivories for the general public; a neurotic actress who is desperate to get off the popular primetime soap opera on which she appears and to land a role in a more "serious" movie (Sydney Pollack plays the American director who may just give her the chance to do that); and a terminally ill art collector who is slowly divesting himself of his massive collection, and who doesn't realize that his new "gold-digging" young girlfriend is, in fact, the former lover of his own semi-estranged son (ah, those French!).

The first story cuts the deepest in terms of thematic richness and character development; the second is played mainly for broad laughs, while the third comes across as sketchy and underdeveloped despite the fact that it is the one that most directly involves the central character of the movie.

Like many Gallic comedies, "Avenue Montaigne" often seems a bit too impressed with its own preciousness - a trifle too smug in its innate "Frenchness" - to be completely enjoyable. The characters often talk in annoyingly portentous terms about art, philosophy and love, even though they have nothing much new to say about any of those items.

Still, the city itself is enchanting, the performers endearing, and the tone so lighthearted and playful that, even though the disparate elements of the story never coalesce into anything particularly meaningful or memorable, the movie goes down as smoothly as a glass of vintage Bordeaux on a moonlit cruise along the Seine. October 5, 2007

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